Suggestion topic to be pinned at the top: properly install development tools

[Bendba]

Hi,

I don't know if I'm doing my researches wrong, or just not competent enough but here is my problem:

I have an awful lot of trouble installing and finding installation guidelines for microcontroller's development tools.
I got Picaxe IDE and Arduino IDE working but they are the easy ones.
When it comes to PIC microcontrollers and MPlab X, it is so hard to find what you actually need to install and in which order that I still an not able to use my PicKit3 without crashing all the time, haven't got even as much as a blinking LED. I'm not talking about the language here, but the programming environment.
I would like to get into Atmel AVR's too but it's just too overselling to try to get two environments going.

I don't know if I'm the only one on that boat but here is the idea. Having a topic gathering resources regarding that subject. I realize that there are so many development environment and computer operating systems that it would be totally impractical to gather actual tutorials here. That's why I think posing links to well constructed tutorial would be better idea, if we agree on a format for the posts so that it stays clear.

(For example,

"Operating system's name"
--> "Development environment's name"
-----> link
)

What do you all think?