Installation mess, starting over again.

Rather than ranting about all the horrible problems that I've encountered on my first attempt at getting this running, I've decided to scrap it all and start all over. I do have a couple of questions and comments to share and hopefully the next try will work.

Questions ...
1) Where are the best instructions located? I have found a few different versions out there and the one I chose didn't work very cleanly. I used the scripted version that sprayed parts of the software package all over the place. Some parts ended up in /var and /etc and other parts ended up in /nova/contrib/nova/...

2) Do I have to also install swift?

3) Are there any hints and tips not in the docs that anyone can provide that will make the next attempt go better?

4) Once I get this up and running, I only found instructions on how to load up preconfigured Ubuntu images up. This seems kind of pointless because I would like to run RHEL and Windows. If those won't run, this is a complete waste of time.

Thanks

Comments...
1) I really dislike Ubuntu because it's too rootophobic but it would be really nice if it could optionally run on RHEL or other versions of Linux.

2) Launchpad and apt-get are pretty sloppy. and requires internet connectivity to install everything. I guess there is worse, but a tarball or clean rpm package would be nice. At least if there was a src distribution that was available to build, it would be better.

3) Ubuntu specific package dependencies aren't good at all. (My attempt at installing on RHEL crashed and burned rather quickly and was I forced to then use Ubuntu.)

4) It is what it is but here is a lot of potential here. :)