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!
The following minimal bootable CD images are available for download:
- Official
netinst
images for thestable
release — see below - Images for the
testing
release, both daily builds and known working snapshots, see the Debian-Installer page.
Official netinst images for the stable
release
Up to 300 MB in size, this image contains the installer and a small set of packages which allows the installation of a (very) basic system.
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.
