Quick question!!

[justwes]

I'm looking to put Debian on my laptop and was about to download the iso's but wow, there are 7 total iso's that I can choose form and such.

Which iso's do I need and which are just fluff?

[Anigel]

If you have broadband internet, you can do it using just the first cd as a boot and setup cd and then Debian will happily get any other packages it needs directly from the internet.

This is the way I always do Debian installs nowadays as it ensures everything is up to date from the start. Especially as I use the unstable branch where packages get updated frequently

If you do not have Broadband then which disks you will need will vary according to what packages you decide to install. From memory, I don't think I was ever asked to insert a disk above 3, however I was just doing console installs and this was quite some time back so I may not be remembering clearly.

I am sure someone will let you know if I am wrong and you need more disks.

[techieMoe]

You might consider downloading a Debian-variant distribution like SimplyMepis or Knoppix, which will allow you to get Debian installed with one CD, and then just download whatever packages you need. Sure beats downloading 7 ISOs...

[justwes]

I've done network installs of SuSE before so I'll give that one a try.

Thanks for the input guys.

[sl4ck3r]

you can also get the debian-installer

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

it is similar to knoppix and others where you use one cd to get a base debina install down and then use the internet to get all the packages you want. it helps you learn more about your system and it gives you more freedom over what gets installed