Wow....i feel nostalgic this past week and want to try FS2 again for the 1st time in a decade.......so i do the old Google search and find this place...don't know if any of you remember the 101st aces but that was my squad, glad this place is here cant wait to bring back some old memories.....btw i have no idea how FSO thing works or if any of you still go online to play somewhere...anyways glad to see this place is around...
First,

There are several possible ways to install FSO, but I personally recommend a manual installation, following the instructions posted
here, as the old online installer is both broken and out of date (there was also an offline installer at some point but I'm not sure it still exists).
I'd say it should take you between 15 and 30 minutes to set things up. If you encounter any problem, you can ask for help in the
FSO support board, or hop onto one of the IRC channels (links to the various chans are available on the "HLP" menu at the top of the forum pages).