Hey, I'm looking at this site:

http://files.bigpond.com/library/?go=cat&id=126

and I'm trying to figure out what I download.. Is debian install really 7 cd's? Or can I just download the first CD [like slackware does, i think] and use that as a simple installer, while all the other CD's are just filler packages, and the CD1 install would be a simple backbones install...

Do I have to download all of them?

Thanks.

You only need the first cd, the other cd's you dont really need to download and burn, u can just choose the packages u want on the ftp-sites and download them from there, the 7 cd's contain ALL the packages i think

yeah but if you choose debian itself i think u have to install kde and so urself the installer won`T do it for u if u`re just starting with linux i`d suggest knoppix or kanotix or other debian based distris....

Thanks for the help, I just wanted to verify the amount of packages

With this information in hand, I think I may just download the first [installation] CD and install that, using a few of the base packages on the original CD. Hopefully the most important will have been sorted to be available on the first CD...

While a console-install sounds intimidating, I will nevertheless give it a try, and be sure to read the documentation. As cornstalk said, it will probably make my linux experience overall easier from the steep curve.

Thanks for your help and time.

It's kinda easy m8.. the first cd luckily will download the packages from 100 mbit servers (most of the time) so that's fast.. (depends on your connection/upload/download beeing used etc )
but I got some nice/fast speeds there like 330 kbps when my speed was 330 kbps.. now I probably will get 500 kbps ...
I like the speed @ Linux stuff

Serhat

install knoppix it is a good OS