Tarball includes a symlink that goes nowhere, which causes alternate drupal install method to fail
In the docs (https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin/en/latest/install/drupal7/#directory) if you choose the first bullet point method of getting the tarball, it can fail because of a symlink that goes nowhere. See https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/33708/get-unable-to-extract-symbolic-link-error-message-when-trying-to-install-civic
I believe it's because this line excludes the docs folder: https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/5.19.1/distmaker/dists/common.sh#L166
I don't think this is a recent thing.
One way to solve it might be to have that same line exclude README.rst
.