
Debian chose stability, as administrators needed for servers. The whole point of Debian from day one was "Stable", in reaction to what else was extant at the time: SoftLandingSystems " SLS" and Slackware. Refer to Debian Releases for more information about the Debian versions, but the following ideas may guide your decision. Creating a Bootable Debian USB Flashdrive.Choosing The Appropriate Installation Media.Verify that the calculated hash is the same as the one in SHA512SUMS: $ openssl dgst -sha512 ~/Downloads/debian-6.0.5-i386-netinst.iso To be extra safe, verify that the primary key fingerprint exists on this page: Subsequent runs will look something like this: Gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner. Gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature! Gpg: Good signature from "Debian CD signing key " Gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model Gpg: key 6294BE9B: public key "Debian CD signing key " imported Gpg: requesting key 6294BE9B from hkp server Gpg: Signature made Sun May 13 05:01:57 2012 PDT using RSA key ID 6294BE9B



You should see something like this the first time you run gpg -verify: work fine, but as long as we're being paranoid, we might as well go all the way) Also download the SHA512SUMS and SHA512SUMS.sign files. HOWTO: Verify Debian ISO Downloads (from OS X)
