Anyone tried Jigdo for Windows? Looks like its not going to work
 

Ok, I've been trying different Linux distros with the goal to get off Windows someday, somehow.

I was looking at Debian and the Jessie version in particular, and they say to use jigdo. I understand and agree with the idea of just downloading changed packages when dealing with software that is changing, so I tried jigdo. Since my main machine is under Windows Vista, I downloaded and installed jigdo-lite which is the windows version. I notice its from 2005. Anyway I tried following the instructions, but it says to type in the filename at the prompt, and I never get to that. To be honest, it looks like maybe its written for XP or some older windows version and maybe is incompatible with newer windows versions as I am getting irrational error messages.

I'm hoping someone here knows how to change settings or something to get it to work?

Firstly, are you using Windows 7 or Windows 8?

Secondly, I would personally recommend you try downloading and installing wget instead. Then use that to download from the direct download link.

The reason they recommend that you don't download directly is because some browsers will fail to complete a large download. Even browsers that support resuming downloads can give problems and be unable to resume correctly.
Using wget with the -c option will almost always succeed. It is a command line utility, but this actually makes it far more reliable and easier to use than a browser.

I'm actually surprised, and have never noticed before, that Debian doesn't provide a bit-torrent download option. I use Crunchbang, which is really just Debian with a custom Openbox interface instead of the standard Gnome DE. Crunchbang provides it's iso images via bit-torrent as standard.

I'm running Windows Vista still. My guess is jigdo would be even less likely to work under Win7 or Win8. I guess if nobody knows how to configure it to make it work, downloading via browser is easiest. It generally works, but requires a full ISO download each time.

I also agree a torrent would be nice.

Try the netinstall CD if you've got a good connection.
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

On a side note, you should definitely get rid of Windows Vista. It's a complete failure, acknowledged as such by Microsoft. Windows 7 is far more stable.

I run it because it came with the machine and I'm not going to spend the money to upgrade it and I'm not having big problems with it. I'd like to get to where I don't run MS code.