Getting ready
At all times, there are three versions of Debian which can be used. Stable is a selection of tried & tested packages and product versions, and is updated for security as and when needed. The current Stable, 3.0 (codename Woody) has been out for almost two years. I won't be covering this, as it fails to detect my network card, and the applications available are highly limited. Unstable, codenamed Sid, is absolutely everything on the bleeding edge. This is where users look if they want the latest and greatest, although it can be fairly prone to breaking horribly, and is only really recommended for experts. This leaves Testing, which lies in the middle. Testing (currently codenamed Sarge) is the "beta" for the next version of Stable - it is far more up to date than Stable, and less prone to breaking than Unstable, but it is the last place security updates find their way. Regardless, security is still far tighter than under Windows, so this is the version we will install - for which we will use the very latest version of the beta Testing installer (Test Candidate 1 at time of writing), which is available from here. Download the 110Mb "Net Install" ISO file for i386 processor, and burn the ISO image onto a blank CD using your regular CD burning program.Installation with Debian is entirely text-based. No modern OS would use a text-based installer, right?
Yes, they would. A text-based installer means no worrying about graphics hardware or drivers, and decreases the complexity for the Debian people for making a release on all 12 or so supported processor types (such as Itanium). The Debian installer isn't much harder than the Windows installer, it simply stays in text mode for the duration. The arrow keys and enter are used to select options, and the questions are usually clearly labelled.
So, what do we need for this setup? I'm going to go through the guide in a way which applies to my own system configuration. You can use some intuition and try the installer yourself, but remember I'm reporting on things as I've seen them. For example, a connection to the Internet is required during install - on my setup, I'm connected via a network cable to a router, which provides me with a network address via DHCP (Windows Internet Connection Sharing also provides network addresses over DHCP, as do Ethernet-based Cable modems). I honestly don't know what to expect on a system which differs from this, so don't be entirely surprised if some of your experiences do not mirror these screenshots.
You will also need some disk space to install to. A Debian system really needs two partitions at the very least - one for a swap file, and one for everything else. If you want to install onto free space on an existing drive, then you'll need to use an application such as Symantec Partition Magic to turn the free disk space into free partition space. If you are yet to format your disk, then when installing Windows be sure to leave some empty space. If you plan on installing to another disk drive, then carry on - just remember, you can't install to an existing Windows partition without deleting it, regardless of its levels of free space.
Finally, and I can't stress this enough - just in case something bad happens, make sure your backups are up to date! I mean it! Nobody at HEXUS.net is taking any blame if you break your PC
With that out of the way, ready to begin?
