Debian-Installer

It originally appeared in the Debian release 3.1 (Sarge), released on June 6, 2005, although the first release of a Linux distribution that used it was Skolelinux (Debian-Edu) 1.0, released in June 2004.

Wiki English The language select screen of the Debian Installer
Original author(s)	Debian Project
Developer(s)	Debian Install System Team
Initial release	June 6, 2005; 18 years ago (2005-06-06)
Stable release	12 (Bookworm) / June 10, 2023; 10 months ago (2023-06-10)
Written in	C
Operating system	Microcosm of Debian, made of udebs (loading from Windows is supported via win32-loader)
Available in	87 languages
Type	System installer
License	GPL
Website	www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

It is also one of two official installers available for Ubuntu, the other being called Ubiquity (itself based on parts of debian-installer) which was introduced in Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).

It makes use of cdebconf (a re-implementation of debconf in C) to perform configuration at install time.

Originally, it was only supported under text-mode and ncurses. A graphical front-end (using GTK-DirectFB) was first introduced in Debian 4.0 (Etch). Since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), it is used over Xorg instead of DirectFB.

debootstrap is software which allows installation of a Debian base system into a subdirectory of another, already installed operating system. It needs access to a Debian repository and doesn't require an installation CD. It can also be installed and run from another operating system or to create a "cross-debootstrapping", a rootfs for a machine of a different architecture, for instance, OpenRISC.^{[clarification needed]} There is also a largely equivalent version written in C – cdebootstrap, which is used in debian-installer.

debootstrap can be used to install Debian in a system without using an installation disk but can also be used to run a different Debian flavor in a chroot environment. This way it is possible to create a full (minimal) Debian installation which can be used for testing purposes, or for building packages in a "clean" environment (e.g., as pbuilder does).

• Set language
• Select location
• Configure keyboard
• Configure network
• Setup users and passwords
• Configure clock
• Partition disk
  • Create partition
  • Format device
  • LVM/Cryptsetup
• Install system base
• Configure package manager
  • Configure mirrorlist
• Configure bootloader

win32-loader (officially Debian-Installer Loader) is a component of the Debian Linux distribution that runs on Windows and has the ability to load the actual Debian installer either from the network (as in the version in an official website) or from CD-ROM media (as in the version included in Jessie CD images).

win32-loader was born as an independent project, for which only the network version was available. Later the code went through a long review and polishing process to become part of the official Debian distribution.

Influences

win32-loader strongly relies on projects such as NSIS, GRUB 2, loadlin and Debian-Installer to perform its task. Additionally, it has drawn inspiration and ideas from similar projects such as Wubi and Instlux.

Features

• Auto-detects 64-bit (x86-64) support in host CPUs, and automatically selects the x86-64 flavor of Debian whenever supported, completely transparent to the user.
• Detects a number of settings from the Windows environment (time zone, proxy settings, etc.) and feeds them to the Debian Installer via a "preseeding" mechanism so that the user doesn't have to select them.
• Translated to 51 languages. The selected language is displayed for user interaction since the first template, and is seamlessly passed on to the Debian Installer via "preseeding".

• Anaconda
• Calamares
• Ubiquity
• Wubi

• Official website