Anthony Anson tony.anson@zetnet.co.uk
Installing Debian is like being greased, and wrestling with an eel.
No, but installing very old Debian now may seem like it, so STOP.
Even with Woody, there were debian-installer-based disks about and d-i is now default with sarge on Intel. Why make life hard? Do you live in Mazza chasm? Please try a new copy or at least get a detailed review/log which describes the known bugs.
I think the Woody default installer asked too many questions and cfdisk felt more clumsy even than the plain text fdisk. The smarter "guided partitioning" tool on the new installer is pretty good. So it's text menus, but they're now fairly easy menus.
Ignore Paul's comments about debian-installer if he's never used it. Equally, I'd say ignore comments I make now about anaconda: I've only seen screenshots of the latest ones, so I'm out of date. When I used it ages ago, it sucked. I think it's not going to be as well-known, usual or supportable for debian systems.
Ubuntu may be worth a try: I hear it's a lot slicker on the desktop than debian, but worse on servers. In reply to Wayne, I'd suggest that lots of debian supporters "get" Ubuntu, but Canonical has arguably needlessly disrupted debian by not contributing back efficiently (hence Utnubu) and by advocating unreleased Canonical-controlled development tools, amongst other effects. It has ups and downs, like many things.
Hope that helps,