Bug 26963 – Instructions muddled and confusing to first time user, lacks formatting and direction for new users

• Product: [OLD] Docs-user
• Status: VERIFIED LATER

[Description Michael Crassweller 2003-08-19 20:51:11 UTC]

The installation guide provided for gentoo is detailed and comprehensive, 
however it is also difficult to navigate for newcomers to the distribution.  
There is no clear deliniation of what steps are optional and what you can and 
can not skip.  Also, I encountered a few bugs when going through the install 
procedure, but there was nothing in the install docs on troubleshooting.  The 
guide needs to be cleaned up a little bit, reformatted (separate out sections 
more than they are... the colored text boxes for notes and hints is an 
excellent starting place) and in some cases dumbed-down (perhaps a simpler 
quickstart guide of some form could be useful here).  Even though this is meant 
to be a user document, it still reads too much like a technical document.  The 
simpler and easier to get through the install doc is, the better

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
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[Comment 1 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2003-08-20 03:07:23 UTC]

I don't agree with several items you describe. 

First of all, optional items are clearly stated as optional from my pov. 
Bugs during the installation should be reported on bugs.gentoo.org or asked on #gentoo, there shouldn't be bugs in the document, but we can't fix them if we don't know what bugs you have encountered.
The reformatting is a matter of rewriting the stylesheet, something that will he happening if GLEP 13 (see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep) gets approved.

I'll mark this as LATER

[Comment 2 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2003-12-10 07:18:25 UTC]

The handbook is now official; this bug is now closed.