I have given up on anything that is not debian based. And after breaking ubuntu during the upgrade from breezy to dapper I have decided that I need to go back to my roots so to speak and as a result I want a pure debian system. However, the last time I tried to install debian was a couple of years ago before I could tar my first file. I did download a netinstall cd but I don't have a means to do a net install since the only way I can access the network is via a wireless card (my dongle for the pcmcia card is damaged). What is the minimum number of cd's I need (I noticed that there are 14 total and I can't burn dvd's)? Also, is madwifi included in the packages somewhere or must I just get it from the madwifi site? TIA

Oddly enough I just downloaded all the CDs for Debian in preparation for upgrading my Debian Woody install to a Sarge (3.1r2). According to the documentation on CD Binary 1 you can install with just that CD but of course there may be a lot of other things you'll want that would be on the other CDs.

My plan is actually to reinstall the system rather than upgrade which is why I went ahead and downloaded all the CDs.

The jigdo (Jigsaw Download) they recommend for getting the iso images worked very well though of course one needs a fair amount of space for all the images. I'd never used jigdo and after downloading it as recommended found it very easy to use.

Update on this.

The "installation" did "complete" after the first disk and allowed me to boot and login. Of course this had only the base installation on it. Getting the CDs depends on whether you want to get the additional packages from CDs or via http/ftp over the net. If you've already got the CDs downloaded the installation will allow you to add them to your setup so aptitude can find it.

I'm still adding the additional stuff now but wanted to confirm the first disk does make a bootable Debian install.