[Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

CarlD · 2013-11-23 19:35:36

Hello,

I believe that the beginners' installation guide could be condensed and simplified somewhat.

Would it be useful for me to add such a guide to the wiki (which would particularly apply to virtual machine installations)? Won't touch the existing guide, of course!

By "over-complicated" I mean dhcpcd should work right off the bat (especially with a wired connection), and NetworkManager can automatically handle internet connections for installed systems.

By "condensing" I mean to add user configuration, etc., in the same article.

Idea is this should work as a "first attempt" guide for users, who could then refer to the more involved beginners' guide if they run into any problems.

karol · 2013-11-23 19:48:07

There's https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide

HalosGhost · 2013-11-23 19:48:23

This doesn't really make sense. We have the Official Install Guide, and we have the Beginners' Guide. If the official guide is too austere for you, then you use the Beginners' Guide (or whichever parts of it you need). I don't think it makes sense to add another.

[edit]: Karol ninja'd me

All the best,

-HG

Last edited by HalosGhost (2013-11-23 19:48:45)

jasonwryan · 2013-11-23 19:50:40

You can create proposal pages in your own namespace and then ask people to comment on them.

Having said that, the Beginners' Guide typically goes through a cycle; it gets cleaned up and slimmed down and then, as it is editable by anyone, over time it accumulates more and more "helpful" information until it resembles Elvis in his final years, lurching around Graceland with a fried peanut butter sandwich, obese, sweating and incoherent...

Myself, I don't see too much value on a guide specifically for virtual machines. The whole point of Arch is that people are expected to be able to read the documentation and work out what is relevant for their situation. But if you want to start frying the fat; go right ahead.

kynikos · 2013-11-24 03:06:08

CarlD wrote:

Would it be useful for me to add such a guide to the wiki (which would particularly apply to virtual machine installations)?

No, as jasonwryan says, if you want you can add some personal installation notes under your User page. However what VM are you using? Have you noticed that we already have articles for virtualization software that explain how to install an Arch guest? See Category:Virtualization.

CarlD wrote:

By "condensing" I mean to add user configuration, etc., in the same article.

This is absolutely the kind of articles we want to avoid on the wiki: a good guide should link to specific articles, not duplicate their content, otherwise it will become impossible to maintain. If you feel the article for your VM, or those on networking (see Category:Networking) like Network Configuration or NetworkManager are not clear in some of their parts, you are invited to help improving them.

CarlD · 2013-11-24 11:23:38

Fair enough.

For the moment then, I'll see if I can help with existing articles. Noticed that very few images are used in the wiki, although didn't read anything about this in the contribution guidelines. I generally like to use illustrations / screenshots. If people would prefer not, then can keep it purely text-based...

kynikos · 2013-11-24 12:29:05

What "contribution guidelines" have you read? Image policy is stated in Help:Style#Non-pertinent content (tl;dr they're not allowed). Of course I suggest you to become familiar with the rest of the guide as well.

Trilby · 2013-11-24 12:31:55

I'm glad it is against the policy - I certainly wouldn't want images which would only slow down page loading times and get in the way of a logical flow of information.

Besides, what would the images be of? The installation is a text-only process. Why have a photograph of text when you can just type the text? A picture of a dozen words does not instantly become worth one thousand words.

EDIT: sorry, I missed that this was for the wiki in general - I was thinking this was still about the installation/beginner's guide in which case pictures made no sense. Images do make more sense for DE pages - but personally I'm still glad they are discouraged.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-11-25 00:53:54)

CarlD · 2013-11-24 23:17:41

Well, images would have been used to show what various display managers and desktop environments look like, for example. Can also be helpful when talking about particular GUIs.

Anyway, won't use them

cfr · 2013-11-25 02:37:41

They can be useful for fonts, too. (See e.g. http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/wiki/index.php/Typefaces.)

kynikos · 2013-11-25 03:39:04

Is this thread solved? If so, please mark it as such. Keeping listing reasons why images would be useful is completely pointless, and also confusing for novice wiki editors.

I want to be clear on this for everybody, the ArchWiki does have style rules that have to be respected when creating/editing articles, see Help:Style. The reasons why images are not allowed are clearly listed there and are not going to change.

jasonwryan · 2013-11-25 04:00:40

The last word.

Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-23 19:35:36

[Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#2 2013-11-23 19:48:07

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#3 2013-11-23 19:48:23

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#4 2013-11-23 19:50:40

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#5 2013-11-24 03:06:08

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#6 2013-11-24 11:23:38

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#7 2013-11-24 12:29:05

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#8 2013-11-24 12:31:55

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#9 2013-11-24 23:17:41

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#10 2013-11-25 02:37:41

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#11 2013-11-25 03:39:04

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

#12 2013-11-25 04:00:40

Re: [Wiki] Condensed Installation Guide for beginners?

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