This is based on discussion in issue #7.

Since this includes changing to Astropy, I think we should update all the imports in the various tutorials for consistency.

We made changing to Astropy a separate issue #8.
(We can implement both and make sure to merge them at the same time.)

In the original discussion there was an option to move the master table and info on the other lower-priority distributions into a separate section, maybe "Distributions overview". I think there is real value in seeing all of the distributions compared to each other, and the fact remains that one solution does not work for everyone. There are well-informed people who love HomeBrew, and EPD Canopy actually has much nicer documentation than Anaconda and it also installs as non-root now.

In general if we view python4astronomers as a community-wide resource instead of just the opinions of a few maintainers, then it's important to keep a somewhat neutral view of the many options. At the same time we can still give our recommendation for the best one or two options for each platform.

@hamogu - if you are willing and have time then perhaps you could try re-organizing along those lines. You should be able to push to this branch. Otherwise I'm happy to have a go, but I won't have time to work on this until next week.

I also see the value in keeping a record of the possible rather than recommended installation options, so I also think it makes sense to keep them somewhere, even if on the main page we recommend one or two ways.

@taldcroft

You know much more about the way the different distributions work. If
you thinks it's important to keep all of them, then please reorganize
them in a way that you see fit.
(And I don't have time today or this weekend either).

Community recourse: So far, I have view python4astronomers as a "simple
and fast introduction to python" and not as much as a "collection of
community resources". In that sense I would prefer a very simple
installation page.
If I think about weather to migrate e.g. from IDL to python and I see
all the discussion we currently have on the installation options, then I
might be tempted to stay with IDL, which "just works".

Thinking about this further, my suggestion is to put the link and short
text to Anaconda on
http://python4astronomers.github.io/installation/installation.html

and rename the line "Installing scientic python" to "Other options for
installing python".

In my opinion "Modules, Packages and all that" also contains more
advanced stuff, most of which "beginning users" don't need, e.g.

• Anaconda, EPD etc. come with most of the packages installed.
• Packages like astropy also have good installation instructions by
  themselves, so I don't need to understand pipy, I just go to the astropy
  website and copy the command for installation given on that page (Before
  we need quite a few other packages: pyfits, asciitable, pywcs, ... so it
  was justified to go into more detail. Now we can do most of that with
  just astropy.).
• I have never used "virtualenv" (I know it's probably really cool, but
  I have not reached the level of python involvement where I need it - so
  people who just start on python4astronomers won't need it either)

Thus, in my opinion it would simplify things to have the "easy and
recommended" option on the level of
http://python4astronomers.github.io/installation/installation.html
and "more options" and "Modules, Packages and all that" as links on the
bottom of that page.

However, if you prefer to view this as a "community resource" rather
than an "introduction as simple as possible", then it makes sense to
keep all the detail on the same level.

As per discussion on the mailing list we should probably add yt-project.org to the list of install options.

@hamogu - agreed we can add yt-project. I should have time to work on this later today.

I've had a go at a fairly major re-organization of the installation section, starting from the changes @hamogu made. It's probably easiest to just look at the rendered output:

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~aldcroft/tmp/p4a/hamogu/html/installation/python_install.html

Apart from my comment above, this looks great! :)

I like the split into Anaconda and "other recommended options". Good idea.
Hopefully later today I will start working on shifting the other section from asciitable, atpy etc. to astropy.

I think all the comments were addressed in 2aa4752. Along the way I fixed a few sphinx errors and did some whitespace cleanup.

I sent email to Kelle asking for feedback. Assuming she does not bring forward any big issues today I propose merging and updating tomorrow morning.

I think we have no hard data to support that Anaconda is "The easiest and fastest option", so I toned it down to be "An easy and fast option" in 1921e54.