diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..d9153e93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+
+ Irssi installation instructions
+ -------------------------------
+
+First of all, you need GLib to compile irssi. If you don't have it
+already, you can either install it or let irssi download & compile it.
+The automatic downloading works only if you have wget or ncftpget
+installed, you can do it manually by unpacking glib sources to irssi's
+root dir.
+
+For most people, this should work just fine:
+
+ ./configure
+ make
+ su
+ make install     (not _really_ required except for perl support)
+
+You may want to give some parameters to configure, here's the most
+commonly used ones:
+
+  --prefix        - Specifies the path where irssi will be installed.
+                    YES, you can install irssi WITHOUT ROOT permissions
+		    by using --prefix=/home/dir
+  --with-proxy    - Build the irssi proxy (see startup-HOWTO).
+  --enable-ipv6   - Enable IPv6 support.
+
+If GLib or ncurses is installed installed in a non-standard path you can
+specify it with --with-glib=/path and --with-ncurses=/path.
+
+Irssi doesn't really need curses anymore, by default it uses
+terminfo/termcap directly. The functions for using terminfo/termcap
+however are usually only in curses library, some systems use libtermcap
+as well. If you want to use only curses calls for some reason, use
+--without-terminfo.
+
+
+ Perl problems
+ -------------
+
+Perl support generates most of the problems. There's quite a many
+things that can go wrong:
+
+ - Perl 5.004 doesn't work by default, you'll need to edit
+   src/perl/irssi-core.pl and remove all lines with "delete_package"
+   in them.
+ - Compiling fails if you compile irssi with GCC in a system that has
+   perl compiled with some other C compiler. Very common problem with
+   non-Linux/BSD systems. You'll need to edit src/perl/*/Makefile files
+   and remove the parameters that gcc doesn't like. Mostly you'll just
+   need to keep the -I and -D parameters and add -fPIC.
+ - If there's any weird crashing at startup, you might have older irssi's
+   perl libraries installed somewhere, and you should remove those.
+ - Dynamic libraries don't want to work with some systems, so if your
+   system complains about some missing symbol in Irssi.so file, configure
+   irssi with --with-perl-staticlib option (NOT same as --with-perl=static).
+ - If configure complains that it doesn't find some perl stuff, you're
+   probably missing libperl.so or libperl.a. In debian, you'll need to do
+   apt-get install libperl-dev
+
+You can verify that the perl module is loaded and working with "/LOAD"
+command. It should print something like:
+
+Module               Type    Submodules
+...
+perl                 static  core fe
diff --git a/README b/README
index 7f8fdc77..fd05732b 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -3,11 +3,16 @@
 irssi, http://irssi.org
 
 
+ * INSTALLATION
+
+See INSTALL file.
+
+
  * FILES
 
  - docs/ directory contains several documents:
     - startup-HOWTO.txt - new users should read this
-    - manual.txt - manual I started writing but didn't get it finished :)
+    - manual.txt - manual I started writing but didn't get it very far :)
     - perl.txt - Perl scripting help
     - formats.txt - How to use colors, etc. with irssi
     - faq.txt - Frequently Asked Questions
@@ -107,5 +112,5 @@ See TODO file if it is already listed in there - if not send me email..
 
  - Timo Sirainen
  - tss@iki.fi
- - cras@ircnet/efnet/opn/silc
- - #irssi@ircnet/opn
+ - cras at ircnet/opn/silc
+ - #irssi at ircnet/opn, #irssi.fi at ircnet
diff --git a/docs/perl.txt b/docs/perl.txt
index 16ff18c0..0d779a8e 100644
--- a/docs/perl.txt
+++ b/docs/perl.txt
@@ -1,33 +1,9 @@
  Installation problems
  ---------------------
 
-You'll need to have perl support compiled with irssi. make install is
-also required to make them work. There's quite a many things that may
-go wrong with perl:
-
- - 5.004 doesn't work by default, you'll need to edit
-   src/perl/irssi-core.pl and remove all lines with "delete_package"
-   in them
- - Compiling fails if you compile irssi with GCC in a system that has
-   perl compiled with some other C compiler. Very common problem with
-   non-Linux/BSD systems. You'll need to edit src/perl/*/Makefile files
-   and remove the parameters that gcc doesn't like. Mostly you'll just
-   need to keep the -I and -D parameters and add -fPIC.
- - If there's any weird crashing at startup, you might have older irssi's
-   perl libraries installed somewhere, and you should remove those.
- - Dynamic libraries don't want to work with some systems, so if your
-   system complains about some missing symbol in Irssi.so file, configure
-   irssi with --with-perl-staticlib option (NOT same as --with-perl=static).
- - If configure complains that it doesn't find some perl stuff, you're
-   probably missing libperl.so or libperl.a. In debian, you'll need to do
-   apt-get install libperl-dev
-
-You can verify that the perl module is loaded and working with "/LOAD"
-command. It should print something like:
-
-Module               Type    Submodules
-...
-perl                 static  core fe
+You'll need to have perl support compiled with irssi. If "/LOAD"
+doesn't show perl in list of loaded modules, you have a problem. See
+INSTALL file for information about perl problems.
 
 
  Running scripts