Official &debian-gnu; CD/DVD-ROM Sets
By far the easiest way to install &debian-gnu; is from an Official
&debian; CD/DVD-ROM Set. You can buy a set from a vendor (see the
CD vendors page).
You may also download the CD/DVD-ROM images from a &debian; mirror and make
your own set, if you have a fast network connection and a CD/DVD burner
(see the Debian CD page and
Debian CD FAQ for
detailed instructions). If you have a &debian; CD/DVD set and CDs/DVDs are
bootable on your machine, which is the case on all
modern PCs, you can skip right to
. Much effort has been expended to ensure
the most-used files are on the first CDs and DVDs, so that a basic
desktop installation can be done with only the first DVD or - to a limited
extent - even with only the first CD.
As CDs have a rather limited capacity by today's standards, not all
graphical desktop environments are installable with only the first CD;
for some desktop
environments a CD installation requires either network connectivity during
the installation to download the remaining files or additional CDs.
If your machine doesn't support CD booting (only relevant
on very old PC systems), but you do have a CD set,
you can use an alternative strategy such as
floppy disk,
VM reader,
hard disk,
usb stick,
net boot,
or manually loading the kernel from the CD to initially boot the
system installer. The files you need for booting by another means are
also on the CD; the &debian; network archive and CD folder organization
are identical. So when archive file paths are given below for
particular files you need for booting, look for those files in the
same directories and subdirectories on your CD.
Once the installer is booted, it will be able to obtain all the other
files it needs from the CD.
If you don't have a CD set, then you will need to download the
installer system files and place them on the
VM minidisk
floppy disk or
hard disk or
usb stick or
a connected computer
so they can be used to boot the installer.