Package: www.debian.org Severity: normal Control: blocks -1 by 575760 The question of how to download installation media for Debian is a recurring question on ask.debian.net:
http://ask.debian.net/questions/what-image-do-i-download http://ask.debian.net/questions/problem-installing-with-mini-iso http://ask.debian.net/questions/iso-files-on-download-site http://ask.debian.net/questions/i-can-t-download-any-kind-of-debian-installers http://ask.debian.net/questions/what-about-all-those-dvds I didn't believe this to be a problem until it came up repeatedly. Then I started doing user interface testing by tasking clueless users to install Debian. Here is my results from two of those sessions: In both sessions the users immediately skipped all links containing "CD" or "DVD", because the target hardware was not capable of handling such media. It was only much later that they realized that these images is actually what they needed. Updating the name or adding a short explanation for USB would improve this situation a lot. One user was overwhelmed by the available choices and figured that he'd need to read the installation manual and quickly found the relevant link. Great. Only then he had no clue about which architecture to choose. The list is given without any explanations. Some guidance such as "if unsure choose amd64", would help a lot. This sub-issue is also known as #575760. He was then confused by the detail of the installation manual. When looking for how to equip his usb media he found explanations on what usb media is (section 2.4.2). He did not expect this low level of explanations after being required to do the architecture selection. A few times he was amused and confused by the German translation and wording. "Spiegel" (mirror) is not a widely used word neither in the technical nor the non-technical communities. The language used appeared unusual to him. The other user was well aware of what architectures are. However when he clicked on the relevant architecture from http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst he was confused about the directory listing at http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/, because he didn't remember to read the MANIFEST file. All these issues show that obtaining installation media for Debian is a non-trivial task. I hope that this report can help with improving the situation. Helmut -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
