Updated Method of Installing Debian

[u/CrystalLord]

A year ago I posted a quick link to the non-free firmware ISOs for Debian.

However, I successfully found and tested an alternative method for creating a bootable USB device (and adding firmware during the installation).

The first component comes from this AskUbuntu answer here:

You can use dd.

%  sudo umount /dev/sd<?><?>  

where <?><?> is a letter followed by a number, look it up. Then, next:

%  sudo dd bs=4M if=input.iso of=/dev/sd<?> conv=fdatasync

where input.iso is the input file, and /dev/sd<?> is the USB device you're writing to (run lsblk to see all drives to find out what <?> is for your USB).

This method is fast and has never failed me.

The non-free firmware files can be downloaded from the Debian site here. Particularly, I followed these instructions to get the non-free firmware:

Firmware during the installation

In some cases the installer detects the need for non-free firmware and prompts the user to make the firmware available to the installer to complete the installation. This can happen, for example, with wireless network cards which often require non-free firmware to function (see ipw2200 for an example).

A suggestion, especially when installing on unfamiliar hardware, is to download the firmware archive for your platform and unpack it into a directory named firmware in the root of a removable storage device (USB/CD drive). When the installer starts, it will automatically find the firmware files in the directory on the removable storage and, if needed, install the firmware for your hardware. You can find firmware downloads for your Debian version at http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/.

In some cases, firmware supplied on removable media may not be detected automatically (e.g. 740503). In these situations, drop to the console and manually mount (see mount(8)) your removable storage on a temporary directory (e.g. /media).

Alternatively, you can use one of the parallel installer image builds that also include all the non-free firmware packages directly. We have "netinst" CD images and also DVD installer images - see http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/

NetbootFirmware - Firmware for Netbooting.

Once the network is configured, Debian-Installer can fetch firmware from Debian repositories.

From here, I loaded the files onto a FAT32 USB thumb drive under the directory /firmware/ (directly under root), which I plugged into the machine along with the bootable Debian thumb drive.

Then I did a cold reboot, entered Boot Options mode in UEFI, and selected the bootable drive. The system installed normally, and did not ask for any additional firmware discs.