Notera
	Whenever you see ”CD-ROM” in this manual, it applies to all of CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and BD-ROMs, because all these technologies are really the same from the operating system's point of view.

CD-ROM based installation is supported for most architectures.

On PCs SATA, IDE/ATAPI, USB and SCSI CD-ROMs are supported, as are FireWire devices that are supported by the ohci1394 and sbp2 drivers.

USB flash disks a.k.a. USB memory sticks have become a commonly used and cheap storage device. Most modern computer systems also allow booting the debian-installer from such a stick. Many modern computer systems, in particular netbooks and thin laptops, do not have a CD/DVD-ROM drive anymore at all and booting from USB media is the standard way of installing a new operating system on them.

Nätverket kan användas under installationen för att hämta filer som behövs för installationen. Huruvida nätverket används eller inte beror på installationsmetoden du valde samt dina svar på vissa frågor som kommer att ställas under installationen. Installationssystemet har stöd för de flesta typer av nätverksanslutningar (inkluderat PPPoE, men inte ISDN eller PPP), antingen via HTTP eller FTP. Efter att installationen är färdig, kan du även konfigurera ditt system att använda ISDN och PPP.

You can also boot the installation system over the network without needing any local media like CDs/DVDs or USB sticks. If you already have a netboot-infrastructure available (i.e. you are already running DHCP and TFTP services in your network), this allows an easy and fast deployment of a large number of machines. Setting up the necessary infrastructure requires a certain level of technical experience, so this is not recommended for novice users.

Disklös installation med nätverksuppstart från ett lokalt nätverk och nfs-montering av alla lokala filsystem är ett annat alternativ.

Booting the installation system directly from a hard disk is another option for many architectures. This will require some other operating system to load the installer onto the hard disk. This method is only recommended for special cases when no other installation method is available.

If you are running another Unix-like system, you could use it to install Debian GNU/Linux without using the debian-installer described in the rest of this manual. This kind of install may be useful for users with otherwise unsupported hardware or on hosts which can't afford downtime. If you are interested in this technique, skip to the Avsnitt D.3, ”Installera Debian GNU/Linux från ett Unix/Linux-system”. This installation method is only recommended for advanced users when no other installation method is available.

The Debian installer contains a kernel which is built to maximize the number of systems it runs on.

Generally, the Debian installation system includes support for IDE (also known as PATA) drives, SATA and SCSI controllers and drives, USB, and FireWire. The supported file systems include FAT, Win-32 FAT extensions (VFAT) and NTFS.