Debian on CD

Network install from a minimal CD

A network install or netinst CD is a single CD which enables you to install the entire operating system. This single CD contains just the minimal amount of software to start the installation and fetch the remaining packages over the Internet.

What's better for me — the minimal bootable CD-ROM or the full CDs? It depends, but we think that in many cases the minimal CD image is better — above all, you only download the packages that you selected for installation on your machine, which saves both time and bandwidth. On the other hand, the full CDs are more suitable when installing on more than one machine, or on machines without a free Internet connection.

What types of network connections are supported during installation? The network install assumes that you have a connection to the Internet. Various different ways are supported for this, like analogue PPP dial-up, Ethernet, WLAN (with some restrictions), but ISDN is not — sorry!

What is the difference between the netinst and the business card images? The netinst image contains the installer and the base system. It will allow you to install a very basic system from the CD; any other packages you might want to install have to be downloaded from the internet.
The business card image is smaller than the netinst image to fit on business-card sized cds. It does not contain the base system, but only the installer: even the base packages need to be downloaded from the net.
If you're in doubt which image to use, use the netinst image.

The image size is larger than the 180 MB/40 MB mentioned below! Yes — at the moment, the size is only checked for the i386 architecture, other architectures may exceed the given sizes.

The following minimal bootable CD images are available for download:

Official netinst images for the stable release

Up to 180 MB in size, this image is suitable for writing to small CD-R(W) media, 80 mm/3.1" in diameter. The image contains the installer and a small set of packages which allows the installation of a (very) basic system.

netinst CD image (via bittorrent)

netinst CD image (generally 135-175 MB)

Official businesscard images for the stable release

This image has a size of up to 40 MB. It is small enough to fit on business card-shaped CDs (available in differing sizes, e.g. 58×75 mm/2.3×3"). This image contains just the bare necessities to start a Debian installation, i.e. those parts of the installer which are necessary to configure networking and download the rest of the installation system.

businesscard CD image (via bittorrent)

businesscard CD image (generally 20-50 MB)

For information what these files are and how to use them, please see the FAQ.

Once you have downloaded the images, be sure to have a look at the detailed information about the installation process.