Maybe my discussion will make me look obnoxious and gullible to challenge Debian's tradition but I really hope this discussion will lead to a positive output, rather than to be bashed. Like many new comers, what confused me at first is which cd image to download; 1, 2 or all of them. Yes, it is very clearly indicated in the documentation that only CD 1 is all I need and all the packages are sorted by popularity. But, don't you think this approach is just too arbitrary? How do I know the packages that I am interested in which CD? Yes, there is a long list showing which package where. But, don't you think that is very arbitrary, again? One package may be very popular among a group of you but may not for others. System admin uses tools different than network admin. Normal users may never touch tools that are popular among application developers.
I suggest that packages are group by function rather than popularity:
CD 1 - Base/Core system which is to be used for installation/repair/rescue
CD 2 - Desktop (X11, GTK, QT, GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice and other GUI applications)
CD 3 - System Administration
CD 4 - Network Administration
ETC...
Instead of saying, "...
in most cases it is not necessary to download all of the images for your architecture. The packages on the CDs are sorted by popularity: CD 1 contains the installation system and the _most_popular_ packages. CD 2 contains slightly _less_popular_ ones, CD 3 _even_less_popular_ ones, etc. You will PROBABLY not need CD 3 and higher unless you have very special requirements."I say:
CD 1 is all you need to install a functional Debian Linux
CD 1 + CD 2 if you are a desktop user
CD 1 + CD 4 if you are a network admin
CD 1 + CD 3 if you are a system admin
CD 1 + CD 2 + CD 4 if you are a network admin + desktop user
ETC...
What do you think?