Best sleek, trimmed down server distribution

[Kenneth Burgener]

Dave Smith wrote:
> Just to clarify:
> 
> Sarge *is* Debian. Sarge is a nickname for the "testing" distribution of 
> Debian. This is explained here:
> 
>   http://www.debian.org/releases/
> 
> Using *any* Debian install media (netinst, Sarge business card, etc) you 
> can get to *any* other distribution of Debian, whether testing, stable, 
> or unstable, with a simple apt-get command. If you want reiser support, 
> you can likely just apt-get install it.
> 
> Personally, I don't like the Toy Story nicknames, because they are 
> confusing over time. When I started with Debian, Potato was stable, 
> Woody was testing, and Sarge was unstable. Now, Potato is non-existent, 
> Woody is stable, Sarge is testing, and Sid is unstable. It changes every 
> couple years. I would rather prefer that people refer to the 
> distributions by stable/testing/unstable instead. Just a nitpick. :)
> 
> --Dave


Okay, maybe you could point me into the right direction what what went 
wrong.  I download this bootable CD ISO file

ftp.au.debian.org/disks/1/debian-cd/debian-30r2-i386-binary-1.iso

and the install was not very friendly.  Then I downloaded this bootable 
CD ISO file:

http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sarge_d-i/i386/rc2/sarge-i386-netinst.iso

and the install was much more friendly, autodetected my hardware, gave 
me the option of ReiserFS, etc.  Where did I go wrong?  The 
Installations seemed nothing alike, but I sure liked the second one much 
better.

The second one produced this version number:

kenneth at debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 2.4.27-1-386 #1 Fri Sep 3 06:24:46 UTC 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
kenneth at debian:/proc$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.4.27-1-386 (joshk at trollwife) (gcc version 3.3.4 (Debian 
1:3.3.4-9)) #1 Fri Sep 3 06:24:46 UTC 2004

Is there an installation media that is just as friendly as the "testing" 
version, aka Sarge, for the "stable" version, aka Woody?  Did I just 
pick the wrong CDs?