I've been using debian from slim to squeeze. In wheezy from testing ( version of march ) the system became unusable as nouveau was buggy and recompiling was not possible without recompiling a new version of all X, what being modular was an arduose task. I sent the bug, but all along wheezy, stable period included, it remained buggy. I knew that was nouveau version because recompiled by myself the same remained buggy, but I was using other nouveau and X version in Slackware 14.1 and it worked fine.
As appeared Jessie the X bug disappeared but emerged a new bug worst than former one , as the bug was in the ext4 module of the kernel and in 8.0 just starting to use the fresh installed system it crashed. Worst in 8.1, before ending installation the system crashes. And changing the filesystem to ext3 has no use. Again I know that the system works fine with an 3.10.20+ or 3.14.20+ kernel compiled by myself. As information, I have had the same problem less severe with a 3.18 kernel.
What I want is a method to make a cd netinst with a kernel and initrd compiled locally. But all the pages about it in the wiki suppose a system debian installed. But as system crashes before the installation is done I haven't. I am using slackware -current and 14.1- and I have a wheezy-testing installed quite buggy, and a debian 5.0 too.
My machine is a Athlon XP-2000+, VIA KT-1333, RIVA TNT2 M64. So no SSSE2 instructions