If you want to buy a CD set to install Debian GNU/Linux system from CD-ROM you should look at the CD vendors page. There you get a list of addresses for organizations which sell &debian on CD-ROMs. The list is sorted by country so you shouldn't have a problem finding a vendor near you. If you live outside of the USA and you want to download Debian packages, you can also use one of many mirrors which reside outside the USA. A list of countries and mirrors can be found at the Debian FTP server website. TBD These files are needed only for computers without a working network connection, or those with unsupported network hardware. They contain the programs needed for the most basic GNU/Linux operating system. Often the contents of these files can be obtained automatically by the installer over a working network connection. These are the base system floppy disk images. &list-base-images; If you are not limited to diskettes, choose this file. .../base-images-current/basedebs.tar This is a MS-DOS utility to write a floppy disk image to a floppy. You should not copy images to the floppy, but instead use this utility to ``raw write'' them. &rawrite.exe; In Linux you have various special files in /dev. These files are called devices files. In the Unix world accessing hardware is different. There you have a special file which actually runs a driver which in turn accesses the hardware. The device file is an interface to the actual system component. Files under /dev also behave differently than ordinary files. Below are the most important device files listed. fd0First Floppy Drive fd1Second Floppy Drive hdaIDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the first IDE port (Master) hdbIDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the first IDE port (Slave) hdcIDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the second IDE port (Master) hddIDE Hard disk / CD-ROM on the second IDE port (Slave) hda1First partition of the first IDE hard disk hdd15Fifteenth partition of the fourth IDE hard disk sdaSCSI Hard disk with lowest SCSI ID (e.g. 0) sdbSCSI Hard disk with next higher SCSI ID (e.g. 1) sdcSCSI Hard disk with next higher SCSI ID (e.g. 2) sda1First partition of the first SCSI hard disk sdd10Tenth partition of the fourth SCSI hard disk sr0SCSI CD-ROM with the lowest SCSI ID sr1SCSI CD-ROM with the next higher SCSI ID ttyS0Serial port 0, COM1 under MS-DOS ttyS1Serial port 1, COM2 under MS-DOS psauxPS/2 mouse device gpmdataPseudo device, repeater data from GPM (mouse) daemon cdromSymbolic link to the CD-ROM drive mouseSymbolic link to the mouse device file nulleverything pointed to this device will disappear zeroone can endlessly read zeros out of this device The mouse can be used in both the Linux console (with gpm) and the X window environment. The two uses can be made compatible if the gpm repeater is used to allow the signal to flow to the X server as shown: mouse => /dev/psaux => gpm => /dev/gpmdata -> /dev/mouse => X /dev/ttyS0 (repeater) (symlink) /dev/ttyS1 Set the repeater protocol to be raw (in /etc/gpm.conf) while setting X to the original mouse protocol in /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. This approach to use gpm even in X has advantages when the mouse is unplugged inadvertently. Simply restarting gpm with user@debian:# /etc/init.d/gpm restart will re-connect the mouse in software without restarting X. If gpm is disabled or not installed with some reason, make sure to set X to read directly from the mouse device such as /dev/psaux. For details, refer to the 3-Button Mouse mini-Howto at /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/mini/3-Button-Mouse.gz, man gpm, /usr/share/doc/gpm/FAQ.gz, and README.mouse. For PowerPC, in /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, set the mouse device to "/dev/input/mice". Modern kernels give you the capability to emulate a three-button mouse when your mouse only has one button. Just add the following lines to /etc/sysctl.conf file. # 3-button mouse emulation # turn on emulation /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation = 1 # Send middle mouse button signal with the F11 key /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode = 87 # Send right mouse button signal with the F12 key /dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode = 88 # For different keys, use showkey to tell you what the code is. The base woody installation on the author's computer required 117MB. The installed size for all standard packages was 123MB, with a download size of 38MB; so 278MB of space was needed to install the base and all standard packages. The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude (a very nice program, by the way) for the tasks listed in tasksel. The system for which the figures were reported already had all standard packages installed. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by adding the numbers up. Task Installed Download Space Needed Size (MB) Size (MB) To Install (MB) desktop environment 345 118 463 X window system 78 36 114 games 49 14 63 Debian Jr. 340 124 464 dialup system 28 8 36 laptop system 3 1 4 scientific applications 110 30 140 C and C++ 32 15 47 Python 103 30 133 Tcl/Tk 37 11 48 fortran 10 4 14 file server 1 - 1 mail server 4 3 7 usenet news server 6 2 8 print server 48 18 66 conventional unix server 55 19 74 web server 4 1 5 TeX/LaTeX environment 171 64 235 simplified Chinese environment 80 29 109 traditional Chinese environment 166 68 234 Cyrillic environment 29 13 42 French environment 60 18 78 German environment 31 9 40 Japanese environment 110 53 163 Korean environment 178 72 250 Polish environment 58 27 85 Russian environment 12 6 18 Spanish environment 15 4 19 These are the effects of the verbose boot argument for woody: For LiveCD, allow choice of alternate install media When mounting volumes, always ask which mount point Warn that earlier kernels do not support newer file systems Warn that pre-2.4.1 kernels do not support ReiserFS 3.6 Confirm install files path even if only one path found These are the effects of the quiet boot argument for woody: Suppress confirm before writing the aboot boot loader Suppress confirm before overwriting master boot record Suppress 'Important Information about installed MBR' No invitation to install additional modules from floppy Don't mention that &architecture; doesn't support reboot Suppress confirmation that detected interface is PCMCIA Suppress message about successful DHCP configuration Suppress long message about Lilo and large disk support Suppress long message about PALO and large disk support Suppress SGI disk label note from Dvhtool Don't chatter about how much disk space ReiserFS uses Don't explain what Apple_Bootstrap is Mount the first initialized partition on / without asking Don't offer to scan for bad blocks Don't ask before initializing as XFS, ext2/3, ReiserFS, swap Avoid trying to persuade that a swap partition is good Don't lecture before rebooting the system