The secret maze of Debian images

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 15:01:12 +0100
Debian, installer

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

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/

The newest netinst ISO

Newest Debian live testing with GNOME

There's no official Debian stable ISO using the backports kernel

The FAIme web service creates custom images using Debian stable with a newer kernel

The oldest image: Other-Maybe-Official - Debian-i386 2.1 Disc 1.iso

The Debian maze

[[!img Error: Image::Magick is not installed]]

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

Download Debian

Installing Debian via the Internet

Debian installation media for USB, CD, DVD

Network install from a minimal USB,CD

Live install images

Downloading Debian USB/CD/DVD images via HTTP/FTP

Downloading Debian USB/CD/DVD images with BitTorrent

Downloading Debian USB/CD/DVD images with jigdo

Installing with the Debian-Installer

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

Other-Maybe-Official - Debian-i386 2.1 Disc 1.iso

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.