[ Thanks to lh8
for this link. ]
“Most Debian GNU/Linux neophytes find that distribution’s
default installer a bit difficult and ugly. While developers are
working on a new installer for Debian Etch, there is a fully baked
command-line alternative today: debootstrap.“With the current installer, installing Debian on newer systems
with exotic hardware is not always a trivial process. The
installation CD-ROMs include older versions of the Linux kernel
that often lack support for modern hardware such as hard disk or
RAID controllers and network adapters. Plus, the drivers for some
hardware–most notably wireless LAN interfaces–are not part of the
mainline kernel, or require binary firmware images that cannot be
distributed by Debian…”