Summary:

With some hardware, it can take very long until the first visual feedback is
emitted after hitting <Enter> on any of the menu entries in isolinux that
start installation. (I've clocked 72 seconds for the 'graphical' option and 22
seconds for the 'install' (text-mode) option.) This may lead users to believe
that the system hangs and cause them to abort Debian installation and install
a different OS.

To remedy this situation, I suggest to print some kind of feedback after
hitting enter in isolinux, eg. "Loading installer, please be patient ..."


Full Story:

Today, I've tried to install Debian 7.2 on an (admittedly somewhat dated) ASUS
M2N SLI mainboard and found that hitting 'Enter' on any of the installer boot
options ('install' or 'graphical') brought the machine to a halt. After
serveral frustated reboots, I abandoned the machine and went for a coffee to
contemplate throwing out the mainboard.  When I returned, the installer had
loaded and was working fine.

The install media was a led-less USB thumb drive, so there were neither aural
nor visual clues that the apparently frozen system was in the process of
loading the kernel and the initrd, albeit very slowly.  (The thumb drive is a
recent model which - of course - is capable of much higher speeds.)


Cheers,
Thiemo