The Graphical Installer
The graphical version of the installer is only available for a limited
number of architectures, including &arch-title;. The functionality of
the graphical installer is essentially the same as that of the text-based
installer as it basically uses the same programs, but with a different
frontend.
Although the functionality is identical, the graphical installer still has
a few significant advantages. The main advantage is that it supports more
languages, namely those that use a character set that cannot be displayed
with the text-based newt
frontend. It also has a few usability
advantages such as the option to use a mouse, and in some cases several
questions can be displayed on a single screen.
The graphical installer is available with all CD/DVD images and with the
hd-media installation method. To boot the graphical installer simply select
the relevant option from the boot menu. Expert and rescue mode for the
graphical installer can be selected from the Advanced options
menu. The previously used boot methods installgui,
expertgui and rescuegui can
still be used from the boot prompt which is shown after selecting the
Help
option in the boot menu.
There is also a graphical installer image that can be netbooted. And there
is a special mini
ISO image
The mini ISO image can be downloaded from a &debian; mirror as described
in .
Look for netboot/gtk/mini.iso.
, which is mainly useful for testing.
Just as with the text-based installer it is possible to add boot parameters
when starting the graphical installer.
The graphical installer requires significantly more memory to run than
the text-based installer: &minimum-memory-gtk;. If insufficient memory is
available, it will automatically fall back to the text-based
newt
frontend.
If the amount of memory in your system is below &minimum-memory;,
the graphical installer may fail to boot at all while booting the
text-based installer would still work. Using the text-based installer is
recommended for systems with little available memory.