Debian ISO - Simple to find? No - But, with at little help from AT it is!

[Poontos]

From the home page of every BSD, and distribution of Linux (except RedHat) that I have tried, it has been less than 3 clicks/steps away to understand how and where to download the ISO. Which is the way it should be!

For example (and you would think this is pretty standard):

-Go to home page of OS. Click on install instructions. Click on the list of mirrors.
-Go to FTP mirror -> Pub -> ISO's -> & download i386blahblah.iso

With Debian, which is typically associated with being more advanced than Mandrake & Redhat, etc., but no more advanced than NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.. , yet if you have never downloaded Debian before, it turns into a gruiling process just to find the frickin ISO!

I have tried over 11 mirrors now, and they either did not have ISO's at all, or they were impossible to find, or the layout was just plain ridiculous.

On top of all this, we have this jigdo jibberish, which does not have any straightforward instructions for those that do not have Linux, specifically a version of Debian installed. This FAQ is useless.. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Debian-Jigdo/whyjigdo.html#AEN63 for anyone trying to download from Windoze or non-linux compatible BSD.

I realize that one needs to read the documentation to understand an OS and how to use it, but it should not take all of this just to download the bloody ISO! All I am looking for is, a 1,2,3,4... like all the other OSes...

This has made my bad day even worse... so please bare with me. Thanks!

 

[cleverhandle]

Yeah, Debian is always difficult. I'll refrain from further comment until I find that asbestos suit of mine. Try LinuxISO.

 

[N11]

ftp.orst.edu

Last I checked they had a shortcut to the images right at the base of pub.

 

[lowtech1]

One click from LinuxIso.org

4 clicks from Debian Home Page or 3 clicks from Distrowatch.

A huge list of Downloadable ftp/http links

There are also various versions of netinstall for the most upto date testing packages (testing distro are as stable as others main stream distro that claim stable).

 

[Poontos]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Yeah, Debian is always difficult. I'll refrain from further comment until I find that asbestos suit of mine. Try LinuxISO.

I was not aware of this site. Thank you, it is a score!

 

[Nothinman]

The problem is apt mirrors are more 'important' to Debian users and since jigdo saves bandwidth and uses apt sources it's more important than ISO mirrors =)

Think of the space required to mirror just testing and unstable, both of which have >11K packages in them, then put in there stable which is just under 10K packages and if they keep older versions like potato that another 8000 or so each, then multiply that by atleast 8 because each distro supports multiple architectures. That's a lot of f'ing disk space.

 

[Bremen]

There is a very simple reason debian isos are so hard to find. They don't want you using them! (well unless you're going to be mass distributing debian cds). The preferred way to install debian is to download the boot disks and then do an ftp install (huge pain over 56k, but then downloading an iso over a 56k is a pain too)

 

[drag]

Ya I love net-based installs, Gentoo, Openbsd, Debian, all just a blast, and so fricken' easy too, once you get used to it. Especially until recently I didn't have access to a cd-burner, but i had a bunch of floppy disks! Anyways if ya got 56Krap blues debian would be happy to send you a 8 (i beleive) cd set for a small fee.

 

[Bremen]

heh, 56k blues? hardly, I'm currently mirroring slackware-current over my 56k connection

 

[SUOrangeman]

jigdo has the potential to be freekin' awesome. Instead of downloading one huge file, jigdo snags each individual file on the CD and then creates the ISO locally on your machine. Sure, extra disk space is needed, but I understand we're nearing the $1/GB realm ... if not already there.

Imagine obtaining an ISO through whatever means (straight download, jigdo, from a friend, etc.). Now, imagine updating the ISO without having to download the entire file again. And you'll never have to worry about MD5SUMs ever, as it is all built into jigdo's method of doing business. As already mentioned, mirrors don't have to use more disk space to hold ISOs as well as individual files for net installs. (Technically, I think you could just host the ISOs and use loppbacks for access to individual files within the ISOs, but that's another topic for another day). Regardles, jigdo is sweet, I tell ya. Sweet.

As DVD recording becomes more popular, jigdo will continue to work without any modification. We already have multiple CD Linux/UNIX distros out there. I don't think any of them (including the massive Debian) currently consume more than one DVD's capacity (~4GB). DO you see yourself downloading a 4GB file anytime soon? How will you reactive should the MD5 checksum indicates an error?

Would you rather use your current method or tap into the power of jigdo? If only RedHat/Mandrake/FreeBSD/Solaris/etc catch on to jigdo

-SUO, has the Debian 3.0r0 DVD ISO thanks to jigdo

 

[lowtech1]

The path below is from one of the big link list that I provided in the previous post:

Here is a random click -- United States: debian.oregonstate.edu: FTP >> ftp://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian-cdimage/ >> (3.0_r1) ftp://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian-cdimage/3.0_r1/ >> (i386) ftp://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian-cdimage/3.0_r1/i386/

The above link send you to a compleate set ot 8 ISO stable release.

It might be a better solution for you to down load Knoppix, because the install is extreamly simple compare to Debian.
At this point seemed as if Debian could be a bit too much for you, because you have hard enought time navigating to the ISO.

[edit] The compleate set of 8 ISO total to a whopping 4.17GB.