All people unfamiliar with Linux at a documentation level assume that because Linux is Linux it must be pretty well documented, but in reality, just building the thing and creating an init is extremely poorly documented process for such mature software.

You’re not missing anything. It’s amazing Linux makes any progress at all, because the most high touch points about the damn thing are basically completely undocumented.

And if they are, the documentation is out of date, and written by some random maintainer and describes a process no longer used or it’s by a third-party and obviously wrong or superfluous and they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Edit: Oh it’s a cultural issue, too. Almost everything revolving around Linux documentation is also an amateur shitshow. Systemd, that init system and so much more that everyone uses? How do you build it and integrate it into a new image?

I don’t know. They don’t either. It’s assumed you’re already using it from a major distribution. There’s no documentation for it.