installing D has a high dropout rate

[wilzbach]

From @wilzbach on June 10, 2016 17:46

Maybe that's the non-visually appealing design?

Copied from original issue: dlang-tour/core#234

[uvtc]

For me, the instructions look wrong: on Debian, I installed the .deb file in the usual way immediately after visiting dlang.org and seeing the link for it. The install page in the Tour recommends curl first, but this is the first place I've seen that.

[uvtc]

Much of what's near the top of the Tour's install page appears to be redundant with what's already at https://dlang.org/download.html.

[PetarKirov]

For me, the instructions look wrong: on Debian, I installed the .deb file in the usual way immediately after visiting dlang.org and seeing the link for it. The install page in the Tour recommends curl first, but this is the first place I've seen that.

I guess this is debatable. When I first started using D a couple of years ago, I also preferred the distro packages or the Windows installer (actually at that time the install.sh script didn't exist at all), however as I started using the language more seriously, this quickly became an unsuitable approach to me as I needed to quickly jump and compare different compilers and compiler versions. Usually I have anywhere between 3 and 10 different D compilers on my system and the install.sh script keeps them neatly organized. The install script is also suitable for shared linux development servers where you don't have admin access. Also since there're so many distros, with various package managers, the install script is the only reliable way of getting the latest D compiler on your system.

[MartinNowak]

The install.sh script could take a small introduction sentence, a là, it will download and unpack D compilers to ~/dlang, simply deleting that folder will make everything undone.
With a .deb/.rpm install people know that uninstalling is easy, a script is somewhat in-transparent.

[uvtc]

I think my PR (#214) resolves some issues with the current tour install page:

• it removes redundancies with the main dlang download page,
• it provides more tutorial content (context for the main dlang download page), and explicitly advises installing DMD if you're not sure which impl you want, and
• provides a blurb about what the install script is and what it's for.

Are there any other improvements to this install-d-locally page that you'd suggest? Given that it's a tour, I think it's main goals should be to:

• provide background/overview for the new user who's never installed any impl of D
• provide context for the main dlang page
• provide guidance to the brand new user (eg., if you don't know which you want, install dmd in the easiest way possible in order to continue with the tour)

[HuskyNator]

Could this be related to the fact windows throws a warning at installation?
I really think that should be resolved somehow, it scared some of my peers quite a bit.