Newbie Install
 

I want to install Sarge on a laptop. I was wondering a few thing. Is the debian Installer graphical? Does the Sarge CD set come with the d-i? is the netinst practical for someone with a 56k modem? I'm a sophmore in high school, this is my first attempt at linux. Yes I've been told not to used debian at first, go with madrake instead. I want to use Debian. Since it's my first attempt, I would like this to go as smoothly as possible

First, you should start out easy, try mandrake.
If you don't want to, remeber that you will have download everything anyway so it is really if you want ISOs or just to install. You could also buy the ISOs if you wanted to not have to download. I know that gentoo has an option for dial-up users that will fetch the packages before installing and debian probably has something similar, just read the apt-get man page. And the installer is not graphical, it is text based menus. Have I mentioned Mandrake or Slackware?

Good luck

the debian-installer is not "graphical" (as in, you don't select next with the mouse a bunch of times). however, it is rather straightforward and will configure most system components automatically. if you are comfortable with pressing tab to move between selectable items, you should be ok. there are a lot of configuration items that the installer steps you through. if you carefully read through the prompts, you will know which selections make the most sense for your system. and each prompt usually makes a recomendation that most users should select.

with that said, getting started with debian can be a bit of a chore if the installer gets something wrong. so, you may want to get your feet wet with mandrake before you try debian. but it is entirely possible to go straight from windows to debian if you are willing to search the web and work on becoming comfortable with the bash shell (linux command prompt).

for a fully functionaly graphical x windows system, you will probably need to download 1 GB of data (that will probably take 3 days or so continuously on a 56k connection). i'd say get the cd's from a friend, at a store, or purchase them online (you can get them for about the cost of the disc).

a lot of questions can be answered here.
http://www.tldp.org

there is a debian installation tutorial, but i don't have a link to it...do a google search.

good luck.

Go with MEPIS
 

If you are a newbie wanting a debian-based system, go with MEPIS. It is a live evaluation CD (like knoppix). Make sure you can boot from CD, pop it in, turn on the computer, and soon you will be looking at a KDE desktop. It has great software autodetection/configuration. All this without touching your hard drive. See if you like it, and that all your hardware works. For me, it even detected and configured the cable modem, and I was surfing the web within two minutes of powerup, nothing yet installed! If everything is cool, there is a desktop icon which takes you through the easiest linux install I have ever seen (about 4 clicks if single booting, not much more if dual booting). Based on debian, it makes use of the wonderful apt-get package management system, but I would suggest you use the graphical application kpackage, at least at first. The only reason I suggest MEPIS over knoppix is that, at least when I tried them out about 6 months ago, MEPIS had the easier hard drive installation routine.

56k modem is quite slow nowadays (only 10 years ago it was considered very fast) and it's definitely a handicap for a Debian user who wants to keep his/her system up to date. For this reason I wouldn't recommend the Sarge netinstaller for you -- it'd take ages and become quite expensive.

Considering that you're new to Linux, Mepis might indeed be the ideal choice for you. Mepis should be quite Debian compatible so it'll give you a chance to learn Debian while saving you from a lot of trouble in installing and configuring your system.

So judging from the Debian website, the CD set boots the d-i? I don't mind a steep learning curve thanks for the infor

you can get the debian-installer (release candidate 1) on 13 iso images (from your favorite mirror).

sarge is about to become the stable distribution (version 3.1) and debian-installer will become the stable installer within the next month, so you may want to hold off your installation and purchase the 13 discs once the debian resellers make the Debian 3.1 installation discs available for purchase. you don't want to download all of the iso's or use the net installer over a 56k connection.

What about the BitTorrent images, those will work right? I test downloaded one, without using BitTorrent and it took like 30 secs. Could those be used? Anyting else I should consider before downloading and burning 13 CD's? Will the RecordNow (the burner that comes with Windows) burn ISO images? I'm assuming I would choose the data selection(there are three data, music disc, and exact copy of another disc).
Thanks in advance

i assume you still are connecting to the internet via a 56k modem. if so, you don't want to dowload 13 disc images (13*700MB=9.1GB).

what you downloaded was the torrent descriptor file (probably a 1kB file). you need to use a bittorrent application (such as http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent) to actually download the disc images. the torrent file just tells the app where the seed file is, which in turn tells the app which peers are connected.

i'm pretty sure that the built in windows cd burner doesn't support iso images. try burnatonce (it's free as in beer and speech...and it runs on windoze using gnu components!)

www.burnatonce.com

like i said, since you are bandwidth-limited, it would be a good idea to wait until sarge becomes the stable release (within the next month) and then order the cd's.

http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/

No what I downloaded was a 26K Sarge .iso.torrent file. It was off the debian site http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/weekly/torrents/i386/. As far as I know that's the file I'd need to download.

ok, my estimate for the size of a torrent descriptor file was off.

the actual iso image of disc 1 will be 700 MB.

what you have is a 26 kB torrent descriptor file (1024 kB = 1 MB, so the disc image is orders of magnitude larger than the torrent).

like i said before, this file tells a bittorrent client how to get the iso image from a seed node and peers.

it's like a winamp playlist file...it doesn't actually contain the music, it just points to the music files.

equivilently, the torrent file doesn't contain the iso disc image, it points to disparate nodes which can be accessed to get the pieces of the disc image.

does this make sense?

here is a page discussing the torrent system as it relates to distribution of debian disc images.

http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

OK, I appreciate the information. Considering I have a dial-up modem, I'll just get a friend to download them for me. Thanks again.