Update the readme so that it is actually useful.

1 files changed, 37 insertions, 15 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index f3b3c3c32..2e46cea37 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,21 +1,43 @@
-### About
+## About
 
-InspIRCd is a modular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server written in C++ for Linux,
-BSD, Windows and Mac OS X systems which was created from scratch to be stable,
-modern and lightweight.
+InspIRCd is a modular C++ Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server for UNIX-like and Windows systems.
 
-As InspIRCd is one of the few IRC servers written from scratch, it avoids a
-number of design flaws and performance issues that plague other more established
-projects, such as UnrealIRCd, while providing the same level of feature parity.
+## Supported Platforms
 
-InspIRCd is one of only a few IRC servers to provide a tunable number of
-features through the use of an advanced but well documented module system. By
-keeping core functionality to a minimum we hope to increase the stability,
-security and speed of InspIRCd while also making it customisable to the needs of
-many different users.
+InspIRCd is supported on on the following platforms:
 
-### Links
+- Most recent BSD variants using the Clang or GCC compilers and the BSD or GNU toolchains (Make, etc).
 
-* [Website](http://inspircd.org)
+- Most recent Linux distributions using the Clang or GCC compilers and the GNU toolchain.
+
+- The most recent three major releases of macOS using the AppleClang, Clang, or GCC (*not* LLVM-GCC) compilers and the BSD or GNU toolchains.
+
+- Windows 7 or newer using the MSVC 11 (Visual Studio 2012) compiler and CMake 2.8 or newer.
+
+Alternate platforms and toolchains may also work but are not officially supported by the InspIRCd team. Generally speaking if you are using a reasonably modern UNIX-like system you should be able to build InspIRCd on it.
+
+If you encounter any bugs then [please file an issue](https://github.com/inspircd/inspircd/issues/new).
+
+## Installation
+
+Most InspIRCd users running a UNIX-like system build from source. A guide about how to do this is available on [the InspIRCd wiki](https://wiki.inspircd.org/Installation_From_Source).
+
+Building from source on Windows is generally not recommended but [a guide is available](https://github.com/inspircd/inspircd/blob/insp20/win/README.txt) if you wish to do this.
+
+If you are running on CentOS 7, Debian 7, or Windows binary packages are available from [the downloads page](https://github.com/inspircd/inspircd/releases/latest).
+
+A [Docker](https://www.docker.com) image is also available. See [the inspircd-docker repository](https://github.com/inspircd/inspircd-docker) for more information.
+
+Some distributions ship an InspIRCd package in their package managers. We generally do not recommend the use of such packages as in the past distributions have made broken modifications to InspIRCd and not kept their packages up to date with essential security updates.
+
+## License
+
+InspIRCd is licensed under [version 2 of the GNU General Public License](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-standalone.html).
+
+## External Links
+
+* [Website](https://www.inspircd.org)
+* [Documentation](https://wiki.inspircd.org)
 * [GitHub](https://github.com/inspircd)
-* IRC: \#inspircd on irc.inspircd.org
+* [Support IRC channel](https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/irc.inspircd.org:+6697/#inspircd) — \#inspircd on irc.inspircd.org
+* [Development IRC channel](https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/irc.inspircd.org:+6697/#inspircd.dev) — \#inspircd.dev on irc.inspircd.org