[PLUG] Debian experts?

[Carlos Konstanski]

> But doesn't the netinst CD image require me to be connected to the
> internet during the install? Surely that image is way too small to
> contain the whole OS. How long will it take me to install over the
> internet when my connection during the day sometimes drops to well
> below 100K/s? Add the fact that the server I am downloading from may be
> popular and not well supplied with bandwidth due to funding issues.
>
> Those are the reasons I decided I wanted to download the full image,
> which I can do overnight. Not only will the bandwidth be much better,
> but if it takes all night I don't care. I'll be asleep, dreaming of the
> joys of running Debian.
>
> But thanks for pointing out that I want amd64. My main experience with
> distros is Ubuntu, and they have just one 64-bit image that works for
> either Intel or AMD 64-bit CPUs. I didn't realize other distros made a
> distinction.
>
> I tried to find the image for amd64 on the Debian site. The DVD link
> was empty. The CD link had 22 CD images, about 14 GB in all. So I went
> back to the OSU ftp directory and searched all over without finding
> anything that looked like a CD or DVD iso image of Etch.
>
> Maybe I should just wait until Etch goes gold.

A netinst install is not necessarily a slow thing.  I installed debian
(recently) on a VMWare guest with a netinst CD.  The entire install,
including a kernel download and compile (I never use distro kernels)
took an hour.  This included google time, as my custom kernel did not
boot until I figured out which SCSI driver to use for disk access
(BusLogic in my case).  My internet access was throttled to 800K/s
download speed; compare that to the 1M/s I get at home on my cable
modem.  I would not call this a long install by any means (of course,
I'm accustomed to gentoo; a slow install in my book is one that takes
more than 4 days).  A proper debian install is minimal anyway - you
are not downloading a whole lot.  The sources.list file you get at
install time is spartan; you won't even be able to get much cool stuff
until you replace it with your favorite sources.  You'll spend a lot
more time in apt-get later than during the install.  Plus there's the
up-to-date-ness factor.  Netinst will get you the latest packages.  If
you use an even slightly out-of-date bloater CD, how many of those
packages are you going to reinstall right out of the chute, as soon as
you do your first "apt-get dist-upgrade"?

Carlos Konstanski