How can one get debian installed?

[Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@mindspring.com>]

I am having a hard time gettin anything to work. I downloaded the 2.2r3
CDRoms and burned all three disks. Then I went on to install the
distribution but I cannot get it to work. Well it works in single user
environment, but I cannot believe that that is how everyone is using the
distribution.

When I try to start X I get some jibberish with cannot connect ....
When I try to upgrade a package with apt-get all I get is that the file
cannot be found, like so

# /usr/bin/apt-get --no-download install
/usr/dists/upgrades/xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
E: Couldn't find package
/usr/dists/upgrades/xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb

# /usr/bin/apt-get --no-download install
xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
E: Couldn't find package xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb

but the file is right there

# pwd
/usr/dists/upgrades

# ls xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb
xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb


# ls -l /usr/dists/upgrades/xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 root     users      918400 Jul 27 20:21 /usr/dists/upgrades/xserver-3dlabs_3.3.6-11potato32.deb

Does anyone have any ideas what the hell is going on here?

Thanks,
Robert

--
Robert Schweikert                      MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU
rjschwei@mindspring.com                         LINUX