I'm in the midst of trying out a few new distros and Debian 3.0r4 is a prime candidate, but it isn't clear what the difference is between the regular and the "non-US" versions of the disk #1 ISO. I read the Debian FAQ on the subject, and Searched here on LQ, and apparently (?) the "non-US" version contains additional software that is not present on the standard ISO. Is this correct? The threads I found only mentioned this in passing, and the language in the FAQ uses way too many double negatives (for example, the "non-non-US", bleh) so I figured I'd ask the folks who actually use it.

* Are there functional differences between the two? If so, what are they?
* Which version would you recommend to someone who is interested in installing Debian with the maximum amount of functionality?

Thanks for any feedback -- J.W.

It is to my understanding that the only differences between the US and non-US ISOs is that the non-US ISO provides some additional software packages that can't be used in the US due to legality/IP/export control reasons. Or something like that. But if you just use a netinstall ISO image, you can install the foundation of Debian and then use apt-get to install whatever programs you need from the net (and you can declare to use non-US repositories in your sources.list file as well, regardless of which ISO you installed from I believe).


I'm not too sure about all that, so don't take my word for it. But I am pretty sure that, fundamentally, there are no signficant differences between the US and non-US ISO.

Cool, thanks for the info R00ts, I'll be looking into it this weekend. -- J.W.

J.W. -- I recently reinstalled Debian, and if you have a broadband connection I would have highly recommended trying out the so-called "businesscard CD image" (version rc2) of the new DebianInstaller ("D-I") for installing Sarge. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Trouble is, from reading this: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-i.../2005/20050301 it looks like the preparations for rc3 may have caused issues with using the businesscard image. So, unless you want to wait a few more days until rc3 comes out, for now the netinst CD is probably the way to go. (The netinst CD image is a bit larger than the businesscard image.)

Anyhow, the point of all that is, you probably don't want to bother with downloading the big iso's (where you have to choose between US and non-US) -- just grab one of the smaller images and pull the rest off the net during the install as needed.

Non-US is purely a package management issue! Licensing and legalities of certain packages, made freely available in the distribution within the US could cause the Debian team no end of trouble. Debian are wary of this so have produced two versions.

The Non-US version cd may contain packages from Non-US sources, but more importantly, Apt asks you if you wish to add them to your sources list when you #apt-setup. Which ever version you install, you have a choice to add Non-US to your /etc/apt/sources.list by manual means and download the packages you want anyway. Debian can not be held accountable for what you do after you install their OS.

I have tried Woody, but found Sarge to be so much better with regarding package availability, and hardware identification. I believe Sarge will be made stable later this year.


Good luck and hope you enjoy...............

Excellent - I appreciate the input johnMG and aikidoist72. It looks like others have recommended doing a net install rather than d/l the images, so assuming my plan holds together we'll be putting Debian Sarge onto a machine via net install sometime over the weekend. I'll be interested to see how Debian compares to the other distros I'm using. -- J.W.