I think apt was actually in slink. I remember the dist-upgrade to potato over a modem. It was so far ahead of the rpm based distros then.

But the installer still dropped you into dselect for a long time thereafter. Once it was installed it was smooth sailing.

The thing that most impressed me about the install was the experimental hardware detection. I had a list of all she system hardware and the installer only missed a single component. Even then, it was an alternate recommendation.