A standard installation for the amd64 architecture, including all standard packages and using the default kernel, takes up 800MB of disk space. A minimal base installation, without the “Standard system” task selected, will take 613MB.

The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude for the tasks listed in tasksel. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by adding up the numbers.

By default the installer will install the GNOME desktop environment, but alternative desktop environments can be selected either by using one of the special CD images, or by specifying the desired desktop environment when the installer is booted (see Section 6.3.5.2, “Selecting and Installing Software”).

Note that you will need to add the sizes listed in the table to the size of the standard installation when determining the size of partitions. Most of the size listed as “Installed size” will end up in /usr and in /lib; the size listed as “Download size” is (temporarily) required in /var.

If you install in a language other than English, tasksel may automatically install a localization task, if one is available for your language. Space requirements differ per language; you should allow up to 350MB in total for download and installation.