It Took Me Almost 9 Hours to Install Debian 10

It took me almost 9 hours to install Debian 10. But why?

The time is 23:44, it has been almost 9 hours since I started installing Debian. But why did it take me 9 hours and it is still in installation process?

Let’s see.

The ISO file that I downloaded only contained files that would install the base Debian system and you need an internet connection to download additional software like gnome, kde (if you want) etc.

Debian did not include any non free software or rather firmware in that ISO.

Though it warned me at first and told me those firmware were missing and told me to insert a removable device where these firmware were available. I did not have those firmware. And I did not know what will be the consequences if i ignored that. I ignored it.

Then the partition part took a long time to figure it out. As guided partition did not meet my requirement, I had to do it manually.

After all of that , as I did not install the firmware, the consequence happened to be WiFi not working. I was not able to download other files and most importantly desktop environment. And ended up installing base version of Debian with no DE and I didn’t have a working internet.

All there was a shell and many commands were not available like sudo etc.

Now I'm stuck. Can’t get the internet working and don't know what to do next. Ethernet port might have worked but I didn’t have Ethernet connection . After searching the internet I downloaded two firmware in my phone from Debian’s website. And when I inserted my pen drive in phone it didn't support. I didn't know why maybe because it was formatted with ext4. Then I connected my phone with pc to copy those firmware and install. What ever i did it wasn't successful.

I called mom for bringing me memory card reader to put those firmware but she brought me a pen drive as it was only thing available.

So I decided to reinstall Debian after a good research.

But it ended up failure. I did the steps but there was some mistake. The mistake was those two firmware wasn’t the correct one.

What I had to do is that I had to download the whole non free firmware folder from Debian’s website and the put those in a folder called firmware in a USB or other removable device and then insert the USB in PC when asked. I learnt it from this website and also it gave me link. After verifying that it was Debian’s official website, I downloaded those.

The third time I did that. And still some firmware were missing but WiFi started to work and that's all i needed at that time.

Then it went normally.

No, it failed on select and install software part after downloading the software. But I just had to redo that. And it worked.

I finally booted Debian successfully.

One of the main reason I switched to Debian is to learn Debian properly and to customize things from scratch. And in the installation process it gave me a lot of lesson.