TL;DR
It's difficult to find the right Debian image. We have thousands of
ISO files and cloud images and we support multiple CPU architectures
and several download methods. The directory structure of our main image server
is like a maze, and our web pages for downloading are also confusing.
Most important facts from this blog post
The Debian maze
Did you ever searched for a specific Debian image which was not the
default netinst ISO for amd64? How long did it take to find it?
Debian is very good at hiding their images for downloading by
offering a huge amount of different versions and variants of images
and multiple methods how to download them. Debian also has multiple
web pages for
This is the secret Debian maze of images. It's currently filled with 8700+ different ISO images
and another 34.000+ files (raw and qcow2) for the cloud images.
The main URL for the server hosting all Debian images is
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/
There, you will find
installer images, live images, cloud images.
Let's try to find the right image you need
We have three different types of images:
- Installer images can be booted on a computer without any OS and then
the Debian installer can be started to perform a Debian installation
- Live images boot a Debian desktop without installing anything to
the local disks. You can give Debian a try and if you like it you
can use the Calamers graphical installer for installing the same
desktop onto the local disk.
- Cloud images are meant for running a virtual machine with Debian
using QEMU, KVM, OpenStack or in the Amazon AWS cloud or Microsoft
Azure cloud.
Images for the stable release
Almost always, you are probably looking for the image to install the
latest stable release. The URL
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/ shows:
12.9.0
12.9.0-live
current
current-live
but you cannot see that two are symlinks:
current -> 12.9.0/
current-live -> 12.9.0-live/
Here you will find the installer images and live images for the stable
release (currently Debian 12, bookworm).
If you choose
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/12.9.0/
you will see a list of CPU architectures:
amd64
arm64
armel
armhf
i386
mips64el
mipsel
ppc64el
s390x
source
trace
(BTW source and trace are no CPU architectures)
The typical end user will not care about most architectures, because your
computer will actually always need images from the amd64 folder.
Maybe you have heard that your computer has a 64bit CPU and even if you
have an Intel processor we call this architecture amd64.
Let's see what's in the folder
amd64:
bt-bd
bt-cd
bt-dvd
iso-bd
iso-cd
iso-dvd
jigdo-16G
jigdo-bd
jigdo-cd
jigdo-dlbd
jigdo-dvd
list-16G
list-bd
list-cd
list-dlbd
list-dvd
Wow. This is confusing and there's no description what all those
folders mean.
- bt = BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol
- iso = directories containing ISO files
- jigdo = a very special download option only for experts who know they really want this
- list = contains lists of the names of the .deb files which are included on the images
The first three are different methods how to download an image. Use
iso when a single network connection will be fast enough for
you. Using bt can result in a faster download, because it
downloads via a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. You need an
additional torrent program for downloading.
Then we have these variants:
- bd = Blu-ray disc (size up to 8GB)
- cd = CD image (size up to 700MB)
- dvd = DVD images (size up to 4.7GB)
- 16G = for an USB stick of 16GB or larger
- dlbd = dual layer Blu-ray disc
16G and
dlbd images are only available via jigdo.
All
iso-xx and
bt-xx folders provide the same images but with a
different access method.
Here are examples of images:
iso-cd/debian-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso
iso-cd/debian-edu-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso
iso-cd/debian-mac-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso
Fortunately the
folder explains in very detail the differences between
these images and what you also find there.
You can ignore the
SHA... files if you do not know what they are needed for.
They are not important for you.
These ISO files are small and contain only the core Debian installer
code and a small set of programs. If you install a desktop
environment, the other packages will be downloaded at the end of the installation.
The folders
bt-dvd and
iso-dvd only contain
debian-12.9.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso or the appropriate torrent file.
In
bt-bd and
iso-bd you will only find
debian-edu-12.9.0-amd64-BD-1.iso.
These large images contain much more Debian packages, so you will not
need a network connection during the installation.
For the other CPU architectures (other than amd64) Debian provides less variants of images but
still a lot. In total, we have 44 ISO files (or torrents) for the current
release of the Debian installer for all architectures. When using
jigdo you can choose between 268 images.
And these are only the installer images for the stable release, no
older or newer version are counted here.
Take a breath before we're diving into.....
The live images
The live images in
release/12.9.0-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/ are only available for the
amd64 architecture but for newer Debian releases there will be images also
for
arm64.
We have 7 different live images containing one of the most common desktop
environments and one with only a text interface (standard).
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-xfce.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-mate.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-lxqt.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-gnome.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-lxde.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-standard.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso
debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-kde.iso
The folder name
iso-hybrid is the technology that you can use those ISO files for
burning them onto a CD/DVD/BD or writing the same ISO file to a USB stick.
bt-hybrid will give you the torrent files for downloading the
same images using a torrent client program.
More recent installer and live images (aka testing)
For newer version of the images we have currently these folders:
daily-builds
weekly-builds
weekly-live-builds
trixie_di_alpha1
I suggest using the
weekly-builds because in this folder you find
a similar structure and all variants of images as in the release
directory. For e.g.
weekly-builds/amd64/iso-cd/debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso
and similar for the
live images
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-kde.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-lxde.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-debian-junior.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-standard.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-lxqt.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-mate.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-xfce.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-gnome.iso
weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-amd64-cinnamon.iso
weekly-live-builds/arm64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-testing-arm64-gnome.iso
Here you see a new variant call
debian-junior, which is a Debian
blend. BitTorrent files are not available for weekly builds.
The
daily-builds folder structure is different and only provide the small network
install (netinst) ISOs but several versions of the last
days. Currently we have 55 ISO files available there.
If you like to use the newest installation image fetch this one:
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/sid_d-i/arch-latest/amd64/iso-cd/debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso
Debian stable with a backports kernel
Unfortunately Debian does not provide any installation media using the
stable release but including a backports kernel for newer hardware. This is
because our installer environment is a very complex mix of special
tools (like anna) and special .udeb versions of packages.
But the
FAIme web service of my FAI
project can build a custom installation image using the backports
kernel. Choose a desktop environment, a language and add some packages
names if you like.
Then select
Debian 12 bookworm and then
enable backports
repository including newer kernel. After a short time you can
download your own installation image.
Older releases
Usually you should not use older releases for a new installation.
In our archive the folder
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/ contains 6163 ISO
files starting from Debian 3.0 (first release was in 2002) and including every point release.
The full DVD image for the oldstable release (Debian 11.11.0 including
non-free firmware) is here
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/archive/latest-oldstable/amd64/iso-dvd/firmware-11.11.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
the smaller netinst image is
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/11.10.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-11.10.0-amd64-netinst.iso
The oldest ISO I could find is from 1999 using kernel 2.0.36
I still didn't managed to boot it in KVM.
UPDATE
I got a kernel panic because the VM had 4GB RAM. Reducing this to
500MB RAM (also 8MB works) started the installer of Debian 2.1
without any problems.
Anything else?
In this post, we still did not cover the ports folder (the non official
supported (older) hardware architectures) which contains around 760 ISO files
and the unofficial folder (1445 ISO files) which also provided the ISOs which included the
non-free firmware blobs in the past.
Then, there are more than 34.000 cloud images. But hey, no ISO
files are involved there. This may be part of a complete new posting.
Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we're excited to announce that
Debian has selected two interns for the Outreachy December 2024 - March 2025 round.
