Colin, I am not sure why you are shooting for a straight Debian without Knoppix from CD. I have no experience with Debian straight up myself. From everything I have been voraciously reading of late, it makes a terrific wondeful foundation for other sub-distros but I don't hear much about it as a first-go. For my try at a "full" linux I am going with the Mandrake community 10 install myself this weekend on a spare box. But for me, my main system second only to W98 ( I have to have Photoshop and a few others for work) is my Knoppix debian-style hard drive install. I am really very happy with it and I am confident you will be too

Once I have formatted with CFdisk as opposed to the QTParted, the new knoppix-installer works a treat and I do have the option of debian-style install. That is what I have, though I am still going through the painstaking process of purging knoppix CD things and acquiring things purely Debian (pardon any lack of proper linux terminology here....linux newbie though PC/DOS/doze-oldie )