I have a question regarding Debain Installation. If one has all the 7CDs, is there still a need to go hunting for libraries and other files for programs or do the 7CDs contain everything needed ? Thanks.

Vijay

The 7 CD's contain over 8000 packages, you should not have to go hunting for anything, in fact, I think dinner comes with one of those CD's

Anything specific you are looking for, maybe that would help to appropriately and correctly answer you question, giving you the most direct answer one can. For quite a few things, almost all things that come to mind in the mainstream Linux arena, you should be fine with your 7 discs.

Cool

The only thing I can think of that might not be present on those 7 CDs is the very latest version of some software or a brand new application.

Debian tends to produce extremely solid, well tested software. The base software is so well tested that there are rarely any software defects that pertain to packaging, and the applications themselves also tend to be quite stable. The down side of this is that the software, because of its extensive testing, tends to lag the very latest in software.

Debian as a project deals with this issue by having online access to at least three major software update trees, the stable, testing, and unstable tree. Stable is INCREDIBLY stable. Testing really is quite stable, too, it simply hasn't passed all packaging and interoperability tests. Even unstable is "stable", compared to most sofware you can get on other systems, but on occasion, there are minor packaging flaws that have not been completely system tested. Recently, there have been proposals and activity toward creating an experiimental tree, thrusting the previously labelled "unstable" tree into a more useful and stable condition.

Getting back to your needs, unless you want stuff like the latest nightly Mozilla build, some test release of Mozilla Firebird, the latest multimedia application, or something of that kind that clearly hasn't been around very long, you're likely to have all that you need on that 7 CD set.

Does this information help you out?

Yes, this is quite helpful and good to know. When I download software for Linux, usually there seems to be a need for libraries. Imagine the need to look for libraries for 8700 programs !!!! Glad that is not the case.

Vijay