Changes and Updates to Installation chapter

[Niclas Zeising]

Bruce A. Mah wrote:
> If memory serves me right, Niclas Zeising wrote:
>> This is a list of changes that I think are needed in the Installation 
>> Chapter of the Handbook. It is not a patch to the documentation or 
>> anything, I want to discuss the changes before continuing working with 
>> doing the actual changes.
> 
> On a related note:
> 
> There's an article called "Installation Notes" or some such thing in the
> release documentation.  It is probably older than the installation
> chapter in the handbook, and was never anywhere near as well-maintained.
> 
> Two or three years ago, I started working on converting this to a kind
> of "Quickstart Guide", which would basically cover downloading and
> creating install media, and the initial bootstrap steps up to the point
> of the main install menu.  It was never finished, although I have some
> hopes of  seeing this work used somehow.  (I have neither the time nor
> knowledge required to finish this properly, alas.)
> 
> Here's a PDF of what it looked like:
> 
> http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/doc/quickstart.pdf
> 
> If there's some good, solid interest in finishing this, I can figure out
> a reasonable way to put the source files into FreeBSD Perforce or
> something like that for some other doc types to hack on.
> 
> I mention this mostly in the hope that there'd be a way for a Quickstart
>  Guide and the Installation Chapter to mesh somehow.  Somebody mentioned
> to me once that maybe the quickstart guide could be a subset of the
> installation chapter, which is also an idea worth pursuing.

I think it's a great idea with some sort of quick start.  I think it can 
live together with the installation chapter and be a subset, just as you 
mentioned.  It can be a reference for the impatient who just want to set 
up a system as quick as possible or for the experienced user who only 
need some quick notes on how it's done in FreeBSD.  In that document you 
can point to where in the handbook you can find more in-depth 
information about the tasks.  Maybe it can live in the iso-file/on the 
cd as well as on the webpage, so you get the quick guide together with 
the software, just as with the "Installation Notes".  We just have to 
make sure to update the docs in both places.

Regards!
//Niclas