Questions about IPFire installation documentation for the non-specialist

[com@riseup.net]

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To the IPFire Documentation Team:

Hello, I have just been communicating with Erik Kapfer, who tells me
that I might be useful to your work with some polishing of the English.
I am from San Francisco, although I live in Paris at the moment.

While I do some work as a web developer, the hardware end is pretty much
Greek to me, and in that respect I would like to suggest some additional
information might be useful much closer to the front of where newcomers
get started reading your documentation, even before the installation
guide. I did download the software. "Don't be afraid!" it said, but no
information after that came up on the screen. I must say, it reminded me
of the politician's "Trust me!"

So then I searched in a search engine for an installation guide.

I must tell you that yesterday I attempted to install IPFire and gave up
before I had begun. The hardware requirements were a complete puzzle. I
could not tell whether it was possible to run the firewall on a single
computer with only a wireless connection to the Internet. In fact, I
wrote in to the forum, asking about the 2 network cards, but no one was
able to reply. It would be useful to have information like this right up
front for potential users.

If there is someone available to answer the technical questions, I might
work on your installation guide,
http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/start
from the point of view of someone who knows little about the inside of
their computer. For instance:

Hardware

Because of its modular concept, IPFire is very flexible in its hardware
demands.

On this page, we will present possible setups, without making any claim
to be complete:

    Intel D945GCLF2 - A miniITX-Board with one Intel-Atom-Processor.
    fit-PC2 - An embedded system with Intel-Atom-Z-Processor.

[WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WHAT ARE THESE TWO ITEMS? DO I HAVE TO BUY THEM?
IF THEY POTENTIALLY ARE ALREADY IN MY COMPUTER, HOW DO I FIND OUT?]

Demands
Processors

IPFire needs at least a i586 CPU (from Intel Pentium upwards).

[OK, HOW DO I FIND THIS OUT? I LOOKED UP THE CPU IN MY MACHINE, AND THEN
SEARCHED ON THE INTERNET FOR SOME SORT OF BENCHMARKING. I FOUND IT
LISTED ON A PRIVATE SITE, PASSMARK SOFTWARE. THERE ARE VARIOUS MEASURES
OFFERED. I COULD NOT FIND i586 ANYWHERE, THOUGH, AND THERE WERE MANY
INTEL PEMTIUMS LISTED. ALREADY, IF I HADN'T ALREADY BEEN IN TOUCH WITH
THE PROJECT, I WOULD HAVE BEEN LONG GONE. IN FACT, I NEVER WOULD HAVE
TAKEN THE TIME TO TRY TO LOOK IT UP.]
 
...

Network

IPFire should have at least 2 network-cards available (see Network
topology)...

[SO HERE IS WHERE I GAVE UP. DOES THIS MEAN THAT I CANNOT USE IPFire ON
ONE COMPUTER ONLY? AND FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS TWO OR MORE COMPUTERS, ARE
NETWORK CARDS THE SAME AS CONNECTED COMPUTERS? IF NOT, HOW DOES SOMEONE
KNOW HOW TO FIND OUT HOW MANY THERE ARE?]

...

[I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS BEING REFERRED TO ON THE REST OF THE PAGE.]  

------------
So my question for the documentation team is this: is the project
interested in having non-specialists use IPFire, or is it really geared
for system administrators? If the latter, there's no point in changing
what you have, since it seems that there is already a growing number of
users. If the former, maybe a different stream of documentation could be
added.

Cordially,
Beryl Magilavy (Ms)