Debian 2.1 (slink) Information

Debian 2.1 has been superseded.

Since newer releases have been made, the 2.1 release has been superseded. These pages are being retained for historical purposes. You should be aware that Debian 2.1 is no longer maintained.

The following architectures are supported in Debian 2.1:

Release Notes

To find out what's new for Debian 2.1, see the Release Notes for your architecture. The Release Notes also contain instructions for users who are upgrading from prior releases.

If you have set your browser's localization properly, you can use the above link to get the right HTML version automatically -- see content negotiation. Otherwise, pick the exact architecture, language, and format you want from the table below.

Architecture Format Languages
Alpha HTML Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
  plain text Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
32-bit PC (i386) HTML Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
  plain text Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
Motorola 680x0 HTML Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
  plain text Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
SPARC HTML Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian
  plain text Croatian Czech English Japanese Portuguese Russian

For the i386 architecture, a detailed report is available which describes packages which have changed since the last two releases.

New Installations

Installation instructions, along with downloadable files, are broken out by architecture:

If you have set your browser's localization properly, you can use the above link to get the right HTML version automatically -- see content negotiation. Otherwise, pick the exact architecture, language, and format you want from the table below.

Architecture Format Languages
Alpha HTML Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
  plain text Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
32-bit PC (i386) HTML Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
  plain text Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
Motorola 680x0 HTML Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
  plain text Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
SPARC HTML Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
  plain text Croatian Czech English Finnish French Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish
Note that German documentation is also available, but only for the i386 architecture; you can view that as ASCII, PDF, or HTML.

A lot of effort has been put into the Debian Installation Manual in order to support non-i386 distributions. However, some architectures (notably Alpha) still need work -- see the document itself for information on how you can contribute.

These web pages will be updated with new versions of the Installation Manual for slink as they become available. If you wish to contribute changes, see the section and the manual; you can also retrieve the SGML source -- patches are the best form of comments. Contributors or readers wonder exactly what is new should see the ChangeLog.

Errata

Sometimes, in the case of critical problems or security updates, the released distribution (in this case, Slink) is updated. Generally, these are indicated as point releases. The current point release is Debian 2.1r5. You can find the ChangeLog on any Debian archive mirror.

Fixes to the released stable distribution often go through an extended testing period before they are accepted into the archive. However, these fixes are available in the dists/slink-proposed-updates directory of any Debian archive mirror. If you use apt to update your packages, you can install the proposed updates by adding the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list: 

  deb http://archive.debian.org dists/slink-proposed-updates/
Next, run apt-get update; apt-get upgrade.

Slink is certified for use with the 2.0.x series of Linux kernels. If you wish to run the Linux 2.2.x kernel with slink, see the list of known problems.

Unofficial Updates

Released Debian versions are only updated in cases of critical errors or security issues. However, for user convenience, there is certain updated software which is made available unofficially by other users and developers. Material in this section is not officially supported by Debian.

Internationalized Boot Floppies

Unofficial Portuguese boot-floppies are available at ftp://ftp2.escelsanet.com.br/debian/.

Rescue Floppy

Users of Adaptec 2940 SCSI cards, and other SCSI controllers with the aic7xxx chipset, will probably experience problems with the standard boot-floppies. A kind user has made some experiments which many users find to solve their problems. There are two alternative Rescue Floppies for the i386 architecture at ftp://kalle.csb.ki.se/pub/. There are also replacement kernels in that location, which you can use to simply replace the existing kernels on the boot-floppies. You'll need the Drivers Floppy from the standard location.

A competing and newer set of Rescue and Driver Floppies for Adaptec users can be found at https://www.debian.org/~adric/aic7xxx/.

Gnome

If you want to run the latest Gnome on from stable, see GNOME update for Debian 2.1 (http://www.gnome.org/start/debian-readme.html).

APT

An updated version of apt is available in Debian, as of 2.1r3. The benefits of this updated version is primarily that it is able to handle installation from multiple CD-ROMs itself. This makes the dpkg-multicd acquisition option in dselect unnecessary. However, your 2.1 CD-ROM may contain an older apt, so you might want to upgrade based on the one now in Slink.

Getting Debian 2.1

Debian is available electronically or from CD vendors.

Buying Debian on CD

We maintain a list of CD vendors that sell CDs of Debian 2.1.

Downloading Debian Over the Internet

We maintain a list of sites which mirror the distribution.