During the installation process, you are given the opportunity to select additional software to install. Rather than picking individual software packages from the &num-of-distrib-pkgs; available packages, this stage of the installation process focuses on selecting and installing predefined collections of software to quickly set up your computer to perform various tasks. So, you have the ability to choose tasks first, and then add on more individual packages later. These tasks loosely represent a number of different jobs or things you want to do with your computer, such as Desktop environment, Web server, or Print server You should know that to present this list, the installer is merely invoking the tasksel program. It can be run at any time after installation to install more packages (or remove them), or you can use a more fine-grained tool such as aptitude. If you are looking for a specific single package, after installation is complete, simply run aptitude install package, where package is the name of the package you are looking for. . lists the space requirements for the available tasks. Some tasks may be pre-selected based on the characteristics of the computer you are installing. If you disagree with these selections you can un-select the tasks. You can even opt to install no tasks at all at this point. The Desktop environment task will install the GNOME desktop environment. The options offered by the installer currently do not allow to select a different desktop environment such as for example KDE. It is possible to get the installer to install KDE by using preseeding (see ) or by adding tasks="standard, kde-desktop" at the boot prompt when starting the installer. However, this will only work if the packages needed for KDE are actually available. If you are installing using a full CD image, they will need to be downloaded from a mirror as KDE packages are not included on the first full CD; installing KDE this way should work fine if you are using a DVD image or any other installation method. The various server tasks will install software roughly as follows. DNS server: bind9; File server: samba, nfs; Mail server: exim4, spamassassin, uw-imap; Print server: cups; SQL server: postgresql; Web server: apache. Once you've selected your tasks, select Ok. At this point, aptitude will install the packages that are part of the tasks you've selected. In the standard user interface of the installer, you can use the space bar to toggle selection of a task. Each package you selected with tasksel is downloaded, unpacked and then installed in turn by the apt-get and dpkg programs. If a particular program needs more information from the user, it will prompt you during this process. Today, email is a very important part of many people's life, so it's no surprise Debian lets you configure your mail system right as a part of the installation process. The standard mail transport agent in Debian is exim4, which is relatively small, flexible, and easy to learn. You may ask if this is needed even if your computer is not connected to any network. The short answer is: Yes. The longer explanation: Some system utilities (like cron, quota, aide, …) may send you important notices via email. So on the first screen you will be presented with several common mail scenarios. Choose the one that most closely resembles your needs: internet site Your system is connected to a network and your mail is sent and received directly using SMTP. On the following screens you will be asked a few basic questions, like your machine's mail name, or a list of domains for which you accept or relay mail. mail sent by smarthost In this scenario is your outgoing mail forwarded to another machine, called a smarthost, which does the actual job for you. Smarthost also usually stores incoming mail addressed to your computer, so you don't need to be permanently online. That also means you have to download your mail from the smarthost via programs like fetchmail. This option is suitable for dial-up users. local delivery only Your system is not on a network and mail is sent or received only between local users. Even if you don't plan to send any messages, this option is highly recommended, because some system utilities may send you various alerts from time to time (e.g. beloved Disk quota exceeded). This option is also convenient for new users, because it doesn't ask any further questions. no configuration at this time Choose this if you are absolutely convinced you know what you are doing. This will leave you with an unconfigured mail system — until you configure it, you won't be able to send or receive any mail and you may miss some important messages from your system utilities. If none of these scenarios suits your needs, or if you need a finer setup, you will need to edit configuration files under the /etc/exim4 directory after the installation is complete. More information about exim4 may be found under /usr/share/doc/exim4.