Hi, I'm installing debian squeeze on a laptop and I am at the software selection
Point. I was expecting to select base system, laptop, and desktop environment
from the guides I have seen. But it only gives me the "standard system" as a choice.
This is an amd64 netinst and it did detect my connection.
Is this normal?

It may be a bug in the installer. Just like everything else in testing, the installer also gets upgrades and whatnot. You might try a previous daily or weekly build of the installer. Or I think if you use a Lenny installer in advanced mode that you can select testing as the source.

Okay, well I've gone and bought the farm.

Now I've got debian installed but no desktop environment.

su
apt-cache search gnome gets me nothing
apt-get install gnome gets me "E: couldn't find package gnome"
Is there a command to check my internet connection?
I pinged google.com and it said "15 packets transmitted, 15 received, o% loss"
Does this mean my connection is good?
I can't see why apt-get install is not working...

Yeah, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to be "one of those noobs"...

Edit: I used my last cd to burn this iso I installed from...

apt-cache search gnome should give you a lot of output.
have you had a look at /etc/apt/sources.list?
btw: i think the complete gnome-environment metapackage is called
gnome-desktop-environment, for sure its not just gnome.

if you wouldn`t have got a net-connection apt-get install
should give u an according error-message, so i guess the network is running.

Apt-get update gets me:

"Err http://security.debian.org squeeze/updates Release.gpg
Could not resolve 'security.debian.org'"

and 3 more errors of the same type for 'security.debian.org', and 'ftp.egr.msu.edu' twice.

What could that mean?

You probably need to add some nameservers to your /etc/resolv.conf file. Although, I guess you could ping google.com, so maybe not...

Maybe try a different mirror in your sources.list file?

typo ?, in mine its:

Which namerservers should I add? It currently has:

"domain Belkin
search Belkin
nameserver (my IP address is here)"

Is that bad?

Yes, in my /etc/apt/sources.list it matches yours...

I tried the ftp.us.debian.org mirror just now and it gives me the same
"could not resolve" error.

i got two ideas:
copy and paste your sources.list to post it here.

comment out all mirrors whiche give you an error, run an apt-get update to see what will happen(the world will keep on running if you run without security-mirror for a few minutes :-); its just a check anyway).

backup your sources.list.

greetings

post-edit: yeah sure, i read your following post,
should have thought twice before writing, sorry.

The name servers should probably be your router IP address and/or your ISP nameservers.

All I have is a terminal so I can't copy and past and then post in this
forum. I'm on a different computer. I'll do what you said with the
commenting out though.

Okay, with every source commented out it says: "Reading package lists...Done." and stops

Hmm.. I wonder what my ISP nameserver is.. it doesn't look like its there in my resolv file though...

Well I think the name server is my routers IP address. I wouldn't be able
to ping google if it was wrong would I?

Could both servers be down? Does anyone want to try downloading a package
from those servers (ftp.us.debian.org and the msu one)?