I've always installed C5 manually. I typically upload an extracted folder via FTP (although that can take a while), or I upload and extract via Cpanel file manager (takes only a few minutes this way). I've never had an issue doing it this way.

I always just unzip into my directory than pull up the website and go to town. It's pretty easy

Thank you PineCreativeLabs and dbuerer.

Do you both go with the last release athttps://www.concrete5.org/download... (8.5.4 dated June 9, 2020), or the latest commit athttps://github.com/concrete5/concrete5... (dated Jan 13, 2021)?

After installing using whichever version, do you ever use composer to update the dependencies?

Usually, we have several supported Concrete versions in parallel. The different versions differ in stability. Andy wrote this Version Number Guide to help you decide on the best version for what you need to accomplish.
https://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/introduction/versioni...

Thanks Jessica, Seems very well needed! Also, sounds like composer versioning. I've been having a difficult time as I somehow got on a different version. I started over using the bleeding edge git version, but am starting to think it was a mistake. I have several packages which no longer work because evidently the http/client class is different and $this->app->make('http/client/curl') is no longer a class. Changed the package and got it working, but now found that "jquery/ui" is not a valid asset group handle. Yikes!