hey everyone, i'm in the process of learning about Debian and setting up a home web/mysql server. i'm at the "software selection" screen of etch, and i have desktop environment setup since i'm not so familiar with the command line stuff yet, but I'm wondering what in the world "standard system" means. does anyone know? i've googled this but have been unsuccessful.

thanks

Basically just installs the stuff the people behind debian deem to be part of the standard system, i.e utils .etc
Generally best to let those install.

The standard system, or base system, is the most minimal fully functional installation of Debian that you can do. With just the base system you can't really do much but using apt you can install anything you need so you can actually do anything. People familiar with Debian prefer to install just a base system and then install everything else afterwards.

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/...ian.html?page=3

Manual package selection

This option allows you to use aptitude to manually pick from the packages Debian has available.

If you don't choose anything extra from the selection menu, you get just the standard system installed. Veterans of multiple installations often find this works best for them, as they can selectively install just the software they want at a later date. The contents of the standard system include everything to get the system and its hardware running, everything you'd expect on a normal Unix system, a C programming environment, Python and Perl interpreters, and network tools.