What's in this directory?

These are files containing live images for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. They are specifically for the amd64 architecture.

There are multiple different files here, corresponding to the different desktop environments:

How do I use these files?

The files here are bittorrent files. Use a bittorrent client program to download the contents of the complete ISO image files in a peer-to-peer manner. You should end up with an exact copy of each ISO image as though you'd downloaded it directly via HTTP or FTP.

Once you have downloaded the ISO image you want, you will typically need to write it to media, either writeable DVD or a USB stick. Refer to the linked FAQ for instructions.

How can I verify my download is correct and exactly what has been created by Debian?

There are files here (SHA512SUMS, etc.) which contain checksums of the images. These checksum files are also signed - see the matching .sign files. Once you've downloaded an image, you can check:

For more information about how to do these steps, read the verification guide.

Non-free Firmware

This Debian image build only includes Free Software where possible. However, many systems include hardware which depends on non-free firmware to function properly so this build also includes those firmware files for those cases. See the Debian Wiki non-free firmware page for more information.

Memory usage

Live images tend to be resource hungry by nature - they need to use memory to extract and store the compressed system as well as the memory that the running software would normally need. The minimum recommended RAM for using a desktop environment on a live image is 2 GiB. The GNOME and KDE images need 4 GiB or more. If you have a system with less memory, your system will not work well here.

Other questions?

See the Debian CD FAQ for lots more information about Debian CDs and installation.

The images here were put together by the Debian Images team, using live-build and other software.