What's in this directory?

These are files containing the installer and other software for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. The files in this directory are designed to work on both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs (i386 and amd64).

How do I use these files?

The files here are bittorrent files. Use a bittorrent client program to download the contents of the complete ISO image files in a peer-to-peer manner. 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.

What size and type of media will I need?

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.

What is a netinst image?

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.

How can I verify my download is correct and exactly what has been created by Debian?

There are files here (SHA512SUMS, etc.) which contain checksums of the images. These checksum files are also signed - see the matching .sign files. Once you've downloaded an image, you can check:

that its checksum matches that expected from the checksum file; and
that the checksum file has not been tampered with.

For more information about how to do these steps, read the verification guide.

Non-free Firmware

This is an official Debian image build and so only includes Free Software.

For convenience for some users, there is an alternative unofficial netinst CD build which includes non-free firmware for extra support for some awkward hardware. Look under /cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ if you need that CD image instead.