To get going with Debian, all you really need is the first CD. That is the installer, has the 2.2 and 2.4.18 kernels availible, and a basic set of modules that you will need. To start out, I would gstick with the stable version (woody). It has less packages, but you can find backports of some of the other newer/unavailible packages through unofficial sources around the net. (see last paragraph)
When you first run the CD, it is probably best to enter "bf24" (without quotes) athe the boot: prompt. This will start the 2.4.18 kernel that carries a greater number of modules with it that the default 2.2 kernel.
The installation is text based, by I am sure you have installed Linux a few times to know what you are doing for a basic install. When you get to taskel, select X windows, and the development environments it offers.
Skip the deselect part. Deselect is primitive, and can be a nighmare.
During the installation, you will be asked to add sources to apt. If you are on a cable modem, or on a network that utilizes DHCP, go ahead and configure apt to get the security updates, and add sources from the official Debian apt repository. If you are on dial-up or on DSL that doesn't utilize DHCP, skip the apt configuration. You will have to manually configure it once you are up and running (this is not hard at all.)
You will, at some point, be asked which Desktop Manager you wish to install. Do yourself a foavor and go with KDM. The GDM on that disk, for whatever reason or another, doesn't work too well. It wouldn't let me log in as root! KDM seems to work fine, and you can always switch this later with the updare-rc.d utility that is included with Debian. Just go with KDM for now, until you are up and running and you can do post-install configuration.
Once it starts installing, find something else to do. It takes quite some time. Once it finishes, you will have to login at the prompt and run /usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config to configure X. Make sure you know a thing or two about your hardware, especially info pertaining to your monitor's horizontal and vertical sync rates and refresh rates. At the end of this, make sure you skp the first three questions it asks you pertaining to where to save the config file. Answer no to the first threee questions, and save it to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. If you configured X right, you should be good to go. If not, keep playing with the configuration utility until you get it right.
If you are using dial-up or PPPoE, you will need to read the next two parts. If not, and you configured apt throught the main installation, you should be good to go. I would suggest going to Debian's site and reading the APT-HOWTO.
If you are using dial up, you will probably need to configure kppp, or one of those programs. It comes default with KDE. KDE also has a PPPoE utility that you can use. It is under the INTERNET menu. Get those configured, and make sure you have internet connectivity.
Now you will need to add sources to apt. Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file and place these in there (You can substitute US for your country code:
deb
http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb
http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb
http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free
save the file, then run this:
$ apt-get update
That will give you a starter's database full of applications. Run:
$ apt-get install synaptic
It will download and install synaptic (graphical front-end for apt) for you. Run synaptic:
$ synaptic
It would probably be a wise idea to upgrade whatever you have on there already, so click the upgrade button and then the proceed button. Apt will upgrade all of your installed packages if there is a newer version availible. You can then go through everything, find what you want, select it, hit install, and then proceed, and it will down.oad and install anything you want. Apt is the coolest thing in the world
If you are looking for packages taht haven't been released under Debian, or that are only availible in the testing/unstable distributions, you can always check
www.apt-get.org to see if there are any backports, or if someone made packages for the particular app you want. For example, mplayer does not ship with Debian, but there is a package availible on that page for it. Just add it too /etc/apt/sources.list, run apt-get update, and then install it manually or use synaptic. Just make sure that you add sources for woody if you are using woody. When you start mixing and matching, you can give yourself a lot of problems.
Hop this helps. Let us know if you have any questions.
