On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 09:58:36AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote: > The netinst CD is for installation from the network. It is > purposefully stripped down. > > It does not contain non-free firmware, including the firmware > that must be loaded on some Intel wifi devices to get them to > work. > > You probably want a full installer with lots of packages on it, > and especially a version which includes non-free firmware.
Note that these two things are orthogonal. You can get an unofficial CD-sized installer with non-free firmware, but without desktop environments and other large packages. Or you can get a DVD-sized installer with desktop environments but without non-free firmware. Or you can get a DVD-sized installer with both. The official Debian installers lack non-free firmware packages for philosophical reasons, not size reasons.
