Not to burst the bubble...
... but not all is golden there either.
When starting a new setup from scratch, the ISO images definitely have their place. They are much easier to recover if something goes awry. A first time Debian incremental installation is feasible when you're on a direct internet connection, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't support PPPoE without a lot of manual intervention. And with a straight ISO image, you also don't have to go hunt for a mirror that stocks the package you're looking for.
In my case, it took 10 (!) hours to download disk 1 over a DSL line. IIRC, it only took 4 hours to grab both Mandrake 8 ISOs. Installing Debian was compounded by something occasionally breaking in the download routine (OK, so I shouldn't have used the Windows installer...), causing it to fail on all subsequent package transfers. Restarts are very slow and take progressively more time. Effectively, I had to babysit it until everything was downloaded.
To add insult to injury, when converting the pseudo image, it claimed something was wrong with one of the included files. After another re-synch failed again with the same error, I found the signature matched anyway...
And of course, all that gives a fairly wrinkled Potato, so the first thing to do is to dowload almost the whole lot again to make things current. I probably will one of these days, but until I find the time and courage, I'll incrementally upgrade my current Frankendrake setup through RPMfind as needed
