I recommend you put a SSD into that laptop 🙂 before continuing.

What you do is: You get another computer / laptop capable of burning DVDs:

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.3.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-8.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso (brasero did that nicely on a DVD-R, the dell would not take accept CD-R “selecting boot device failed”)

Hit F12 during boot and select your DVD-Drive.

You should see all the normal “Language – Region” stuff.

Then the Wifi missing firmware iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode popup comes:

What you do is you download this *.deb

http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-iwlwifi_20160110-1_all.deb

mirror: firmware-iwlwifi_20160110-1_all.deb.gz

and place it on a FAT32-USB Stick.

Attach it to your laptop, wair 3 seconds, hit enter … and it should continue without error.

PS: I Stick to ext3 for the next 5 years until ext4 is stable.

Links:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/all/firmware-iwlwifi/download

alternatively:

use unofficial non-free iso – that allready has the drivers on it. (Richard Stallman IS VERY MUCH AGAINST ANYTHING THAT IS NON-FREE) For good reasons of privacy… because after all a backdoor in your network card firmware could really compromise your system in terms of security and privacy.

Unofficial non-free images including firmware packages:

recommendation: ALWAYS GO FOR THE MINIMAL and load packages during setup straight from the internet…

 Parent Directory                                                                            -   
 MD5SUMS                                                                2017-01-17 11:09   66   
 MD5SUMS.sign                                                           2017-01-17 11:10  819   
 SHA1SUMS                                                               2017-01-17 11:09   74   
 SHA1SUMS.sign                                                          2017-01-17 11:10  819   
 SHA256SUMS                                                             2017-01-17 11:09   98   
 SHA256SUMS.sign                                                        2017-01-17 11:10  819   
 SHA512SUMS                                                             2017-01-17 11:09  162   
 SHA512SUMS.sign                                                        2017-01-17 11:10  819   
 firmware-8.7.1-i386-netinst.iso                                        2017-01-16 11:09  335M  

Here are some extra images, equivalent to the normal images we produce regularly except in that they also include non-free firmware to make things easier on some systems requiring proprietary but redistributable firmware. See http://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for more details.

There are two types of image here:

• “netinst” install CDs that also include firmware to make installation easier
• live images including firmware packages pre-installed

The current and current-live directories contain images that match up with the latest stable Debian release.

 Name                          Last modified      Size

---

 Parent Directory                                   -   
 8.7.1+nonfree/                2017-01-17 11:11    -   
 8.7.1-live+nonfree/           2017-01-17 11:11    -   
 archive/                      2017-02-01 23:50    -   
 current-live/                 2017-01-17 11:11    -   
 current/                      2017-01-17 11:11    -   
 daily-builds-debian-edu/      2012-07-22 21:57    -   
 daily-builds/                 2015-04-27 18:30    -   
 stretch_di_rc1/               2017-01-14 00:53    -   
 stretch_di_rc2/               2017-02-01 23:49    -   
 stretch_di_rc3/               2017-04-09 23:04    -   
 weekly-builds/                2017-04-24 10:37    -   
 weekly-live-builds/           2017-04-25 10:25    -

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