Thread:Project:Support desk/Non-developer's Guide to Git/reply

Hi. I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble with the gz files. They are still supported, and are still the recommended way of getting MediaWiki for non-developers. What troubles specifically are you having with extensions?

Git is primarily aimed at developers. Some people do use it just for getting MediaWiki (It can be convenient for upgrading versions), however it is by no means required. To answer your question, the directory downloaded is the web directory. The checkout command is used to change versions. (By default it downloads "master" which is the experimental MediaWiki 1.23 alpha). You can use a command like  from inside the downloaded directory to switch to the stable MediaWiki 1.22 release