These are files containing the installer and other software
for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system.
The files in this directory are specifically for
the i386
architecture.
The files here are in "jigdo" format. Use jigdo tools to download the contents of the complete ISO image files from what's here and a normal Debian mirror. You should end up with an exact copy of each ISO image as though you'd downloaded it directly via HTTP or FTP.
Once you have downloaded all the ISO images you want, you will typically need to write them to installation media.
The images described here are sized to be written to writeable CD media at a minimum, but may be written to larger media if needed. For extra convenience, these images may also be written directly to a USB stick. So long as your computer will boot directly from that USB stick, it should start the Debian installer that way.
In most cases it is not necessary to download and use all of these images to be able to install Debian on your computer. Debian comes with a massive set of software packages, hence why it takes so many disks for a complete set. Most typical users only need a small subset of those software packages.
Initially, you will only need to download and use
the first image of a set (labelled as
debian-something-1
to be able to start the
Debian installer and set up Debian on your computer. If there are
more images available here
(labelled debian-something-2
,
debian-something-3
, etc.), they contain the
extra packages that can be installed on a Debian system (as
mentioned previously). They will not be bootable
and are entirely optional. If you have a fast Internet
connection, you're most likely better off installing any desired
extra packages directly from the Debian mirrors on the Internet
instead of by using these extra images.
There are different versions of CD #1 here to allow for a
choice of default desktop on installation,
e.g. debian-something-kde-CD-1
contains the
core pieces of the KDE desktop and will default to installing
that desktop when used. The default desktop
installed using
debian-something-CD-1
is Gnome.
The netinst
CD here is a small CD image that
contains just the core Debian installer code and a small core set
of text-mode programs (known as "standard" in Debian). To install
a desktop or other common software, you'll also need either an
Internet connection or some other Debian CD/DVD images.
The mac netinst
CD here is a special version of
the netinst CD image that is targeted specifically at 32-bit
Intel Macintosh machines. It will likely work on most other
i386 machines too, but it does not contain UEFI boot files that
some people need.
The update
files here are extra convenience files
for people updating from previous versions of Debian. If you are
installing fresh, you may safely ignore
them. More
details...
There are files here (MD5SUMS, SHA1SUMS, etc.) which contain checksums of the images. These checksum files are also signed - see MD5SUMS.sign, SHA1SUMS.sign, etc. Once you've downloaded an image, you can check:
For more information about how to do these steps, read the verification guide.
See the Debian CD FAQ for lots more information about Debian CDs and installation.