So, I had the first three CDs of Debian. What is Debian? Here's what I found out from reading the website, and from some other things I'd read on the web and in magazines.

Debian is a "distribution of GNU/Linux". It's not just "Linux" because it includes a whole lot of other applications besides Linux, which is "just the kernel". And all of those other applications are made by the GNU project, so they're GNU applications. So Debian is GNU/Linux. Ok.

It's also a "distribution" because the fact that it contains all these GNU applications along with Linux distinguishes it from some other distributions, like Red Hat, like Mandriva, or Suse, or Gentoo. Or Ubuntu or Slackware. Since all of these basically refer to the same operating system, there needs to be a word to describe where they are not the same. That word is "distribution."

I briefly asked the admin guy at work, B_____, if he thought I would have any problems installing Debian. He mentioned something about an automatic "discovery" tool and concluded that everything should take care of itself.

I don't know what this automatic "discovery" tool was, but he was right: everything took care of itself. All I had to do was insert CD#1 and turn my computer on. Debian then asked me plain questions to get itself installed properly, and asked for the other CDs when it felt that they were essential.

I guess there were some questions that were harder than others, but nothing too tough. I didn't need to know anything about my hardware for example. I didn't need to unscrew my laptop case and read serial numbers off of processors or vacuum tubes. The hardest question was probably something like "Do you want to partition your hard drive?". But there was always a default choice so all I had to do was hit Enter.

All in all, the installation was smooth as butter. The first problem was when I saw the desktop.