My experience installing the Debian distro

[SirClintonPortis]

Originally Posted by tryfuhl

I never install anything over a wireless network and if it's a single machine, I'm doing it right there at the machine. Having done Ubuntu with WUBI, without it, and manually I'd have to say that I'd go with the Wizard that does it from the new OS itself rather than use an in-Windows installation again. Seemed like even on the same machine I ran into less problems.

My biggest issues with Linux based distros was also wireless cards and graphic cards, specifically nVidia cards (damn you xorg!) as well. I've never configured a Debian install, only installed it for someone, and this was half a decade ago.

I've done the same thing as far as making the root dir too small, I'd definitely say make it larger than the installed folder and larger than you'll see recommended online. Luckily the linux is a bit forgiving with this type of stuff and is built for change.

Been meaning to do a current Debian install since I got this laptop, maybe I'll get around to it soon.

I was doing a "in front of the machine" install as well. My netbook has no optical drive and win32 loader seemed like a nice alternative. So now I know, having access to an Ethernet connection is necessary for such an installation.

I was just doing the steps required by the installer, so I was just doing the installation.

WUBI seems different from win32-loader. win32 loader doesn't do anything except install a few files to be loaded at boot, and after restarting, then you do the installation by selecting "continue install" on the list you choose an OS.

As this video shows: YouTube - ‪Debian Win32 Loader‬‏ , win32 loader does very little in Windows. Of course, that means all of the needed files will have to be snatched from the Web.

Had I used the guided install, the root partition size would have been 10 GB, the swap 2 2 GB, and /home also 10 GB. But I'm such a stickler for hard drive space.