This section documents dselect for first-time users. It makes no attempt to explain everything, so when you first meet dselect, work through the help screens.
dselect is used to select which packages you wish to install (there are currently about 2,250 packages in Debian 2.1). It will be run for you during the installation. It is a very powerful and somewhat complex tool. As such, having some knowledge of it beforehand is highly recommended. Careless use of dselect can wreak havoc on your system.
dselect will step you through the package installation process outlined here:
As each step is completed successfully, dselect will lead you on to the next. Go through them in order without skipping any steps.
Here and there in this document we talk of starting another shell. Linux has six console sessions or shells available at any one time. You switch between them by pressing Left Alt-F1 through Left Alt-F6, after which you log in on your new shell and go ahead. The console used by the install process is the first one, a.k.a. tty1, so press Left Alt-F1 when you want to return to that process.