Debian GNU/Linux is the computer operating system that I use when I get to choose. It's a version of the GNU/Linux operating system that's developed cooperatively by people around the globe. It's very stable, very high-quality, and you can decide for yourself whether you want older, more proven software, or newer software, or bleeding-edge software. Freedom and control. Sweeeet.

It's also somewhat more difficult to install than its commercial counterparts, so most people start with Red Hat or Mandrake first. You can get more info about the operating system (and the operating system itself!) at http://www.debian.org/.

• DebianPrinting
• DebianNetworking
• DebianPackages
• DebianSparc
• OracleOnDebian

netinst-2.2r4.iso - this is a small file that allows you to burn an installation CD that gets most of its files from the net. I thought that this would be a cool thing to write - this guy beat me to it. http://markybobdeb.sourceforge.net/elf/

woody netinst - http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/ - this guy picked up the ball and created a netinst cd for Debian woody. One small bug: the installation program set up the /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the 'stable' distribution, which is (as I write this) potato, not woody. You need to change it to 'woody' and apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade.

woody minimal cdrom image - if you don't have access to the 'net during your installation then these images might do the trick: they're very small but can build a minimal system that includes some useful stuff. http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-cd/

installing Debian - install the smallest number of packages possible during the initial install process. I've found that it's better to get a minimal system fully up and running and then add packages to it later.

After installation check:

• is all of the system memory recognized (i.e. cat /proc/meminfo)? If not you might need to use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel, or pass the amount of memory into lilo.
• if you've got more than one cpu, are they all recognized (i.e. cat /proc/cpuinfo)? If not then you might need to recompile the kernel with SMP support.
• are the disk drives using DMA (i.e. hdparm -d /dev/hda)?

Before you walk away from the console:

• add one non-root account (Debian by default doesn't let root log in remotely)
• install ssh server and client
• ssh to another machine and then back again (just to test that you can)

-- TobyCabot - 05 Jun 2001 - 31 May 2002