Getting Debian

Debian is distributed freely over Internet. You can download all of it from any of our mirrors. The Installation Manual contains detailed installation instructions. And, the release notes can be found here.

This page has options for installing Debian Stable. If you are interested in Testing or Unstable, visit our releases page.

Download an installation image

Depending on your Internet connection, you may download either of the following:

A small installation image: can be downloaded quickly and should be recorded onto a removable disk. To use this, you will need a machine with an Internet connection.
- 64-bit PC netinst iso
- 32-bit PC netinst iso
A larger complete installation image: contains more packages, making it easier to install machines without an Internet connection.

Use a Debian cloud image

An official cloud image, built by the cloud team, can be used on:

your OpenStack provider, in qcow2 or raw formats.
- 64-bit AMD/Intel (qcow2, raw)
- 64-bit ARM (qcow2, raw)
- 64-bit Little Endian PowerPC (qcow2, raw)
Amazon EC2, either as a machine image or via the AWS Marketplace.
- Amazon Machine Images
- AWS Marketplace
Microsoft Azure, on the Azure Marketplace.
- Debian 11 ("Bullseye")
- Debian 10 ("Buster")

Buy a set of CDs or DVDs from one of the vendors selling Debian CDs

Many of the vendors sell the distribution for less than US$5 plus shipping (check their web page to see if they ship internationally).
Some of the books about Debian come with CDs, too.

Here are the basic advantages of CDs:

Installation from a CD set is more straightforward.
You can install on machines without an Internet connection.
You can install Debian (on as many machines as you like) without downloading all packages yourself.
The CD can be used to more easily rescue a damaged Debian system.

Buy a computer with Debian pre-installed

There are a number of advantages to this:

You don't have to install Debian.
The installation is pre-configured to match the hardware.
The vendor may provide technical support.

Try Debian live before installing

You can try Debian by booting a live system from a CD, DVD or USB key without installing any files to the computer. When you are ready, you can run the included installer (starting from Debian 10 Buster, this is the end-user-friendly Calamares Installer). Provided the images meet your size, language, and package selection requirements, this method may be suitable for you. Read more information about this method to help you decide.

If any of the hardware in your system requires non-free firmware to be loaded with the device driver, you can use one of the tarballs of common firmware packages or download an unofficial image including these non-free firmwares. Instructions how to use the tarballs and general information about loading firmware during an installation can be found in the Installation Guide.

unofficial installation images for stable with firmware included