Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with more than 18733 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

Although direct http/ftp links have been listed below, please consider using an alternate method to download the images. These alternate methods help ease the strain on the Debian servers and are more resilient if download errors occur.

To download via jigdo see: http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

To download via bittorrent see: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

Either method is likely to be faster than a direct download.