Updating pear description

_posts/04-03-01-PEAR.md

@@ -4,6 +4,36 @@ isChild: true
 
 ## PEAR {#pear_title}
 
-Another veteran package manager that many PHP developers enjoy is [PEAR][1]. It behaves much the same way, and is also worth researching for your projects. [Learn about PEAR][1].
+Another veteran package manager that many PHP developers enjoy is [PEAR][1]. It behaves much the same way as Composer,
+but has some noteable differences.
+
+PEAR requires each package to have a specific structure, which means that the author of the package must prepare it
+for usage with PEAR. Using a project which was not prepared to work with PEAR is not possible.
+
+PEAR installs packages globally, which means after installing them once they are available to all projects on that
+server. This can be good if many projects rely on the same package with the same version but might lead to problems
+if version conflicts between two projects arise.
+
+### How to install PEAR
+
+You can install PEAR by downloading the phar installer and executing it. The PEAR documentation has detailed 
+[install instructions][2] for every operating system.
+
+If you are using Linux, you can also have a look at your distribution package manager. Debian and Ubuntu for example
+have a apt ``php-pear`` package.
+
+### How to install a package
+
+If the package is listed on the [PEAR packages list][3], you can install it by specifying the official name:
+
+    pear install foo
+    
+If the package is hosted on another channel, you need to `discover` the channel first and also specify it when 
+installing. See the [Using channel docs][4] for more information on this topic.
+
+* [Learn about PEAR][1]
 
 [1]: http://pear.php.net/
+[2]: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/installation.getting.php
+[3]: http://pear.php.net/packages.php
+[4]: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/guide.users.commandline.channels.php