Since I've had so many problems with my mandrake/orinoco combination, I'm considering dumping mandrake and moving to debian, or perhaps something else.

My question is this, at the following website, which isos should I get:
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/dis.../current/i386/

I have a dell inspiron 9100, which has P4HT. I'm thinking whats shown has something to do with processor, but I'm not sure. Any help would be great, thanx.

I believe you just need the first 2 or 3 iso to get a fairly complete install with kde and stuff like that, you can download alot of stuff with apt in debian. I'm fairly sure p4s are still 386 architecture, so those are the right isos. You don't need them all unless you need all the packages and sources, I only used the first iso on my install and got the rest by apt, some people also use the netinstall too, which is specially for that.

thanx for the info. I'll go ahead and download all isos just to have, but if/when I install debian, I'll probably just burn the first few.

If you have a dedent net connection, the best way to install Debian is to just download the netinstall image and do a net install. Saves all that upgrading not to mention several CDs

I have sarge running on two machines. One web/file server and one desktop. In the server I didn't need more than 20MB out of the netinst cd, so its really pointless to have all the cd's for that machine. The desktop I installed with the netinst also. After doing the base install I asked to edit sources.list by hand and dismissed the "install aditional etc.." to install via apt-get in the command line. I downloaded some 300MB to get a complete kde desktop. Remember that when you install "graphical environment" using the install scripts, it installs both kde and gnome. That was unnecessary, cause I don't use gnome. To either cases, I'd recomend using the netinst cd.
I suppose those cd's are good for when you have to install sarge on a machine with a poor link. Add all software you can at install time, point sources.list to the cd-rom device, and don't use the net.
In short: use the netinst cd.



EDIT: The link you posted is from woody, I saw it later. Is that correct?