installing Debian is like being greased, and wrestling with an eel.
This is completely mad.
I have installed Debian and derivatives of Debian many times (on a little Dell that I bought for £50, specifically for the purpose of playing with distributions, and on a couple of other boxes, one a 200mhz MMX, one a home assembled Shuttle).
Debian Pure (now another name) installed over the net or from a Debian DVD with no problems.
Debian Sarge, from a magazine cover DVD booted and installed with no problems.
Mepis installed with no problems.
Ubuntu installed with no problems (though using it, the old version I tried a year ago, was a different matter).
Knoppix has an install option - it just went in and worked.
I have had some problems installing things. I couldn't get Dragonfly to work at all. I had problems with one of the BSDs, or at least, problems figuring out how to get to a proper desktop. I've had temporary difficulties with Slackware, largely owing to the lack of a 'go back' option at various critical points. I had trouble with Mandrake 10.x on some machines. The first issue of elive wouldn't work properly. I never could get Woody to work. So, its not that I can do everything perfectly and easily, and I'm not at all expert in this stuff, but recent Debians are SIMPLY NOT A PROBLEM.
Peter