[texhax] Latex for Linux ["netbooks"!]

Uwe Lück uwe.lueck at web.de
Sun Feb 8 23:47:40 CET 2009


At 08:43 29.01.08, Axel E. Retif wrote:
>On  27 Jan, 2008, at 04:24, wssp wrote:
>
> > I have bought a ASUS Eeepc 4G (701) laptop mainly for my studies. I want
> > to install Latex on this. This laptop has Linux operating system. Can I
> > install any Latex or is there particular version for suitable for this.
>
>Many LaTeX distros (as a matter of fact, *all* I know of) have old
>teTeX distributions. By far, the best TeX & friends distribution for
>Linux is TeXLive:
>
>http://tug.org/texlive/
>
>I think TeXLive 2008 is to be released soon, but I'm not sure.
>
>I have successfully installed TeXLive 2007 under Ubuntu and Fedora.

Happy New Year! (Compare year numbers.) I found this in searching my texhax 
box and therefore comment it here, although previously I planned to tell 
about this to the TeXLive maintainers only.

I have bought a similar problem, namely Acer One with "Linpus Linux Lite", 
indeed in order to drill myself hard. Before installing TeX, I learnt that 
this is a kind of Fedora 9 and I should use RPM (Red Hat package managing, 
yum ...). This is quite a restriction, I found a TeXLive 2007 RPM which, 
among other lacunae, didn't install any DVI viewer. Anyway, I have found 
reviews telling that this Acer One Linpus Linux is ridiculous, and I was 
advised to replace it by Ubuntu (I doubt ...)

I wondered much what will happen if I follow the TeXLive instructions 
instead, will this break the RPM structure? In the meantime, I have tried 
to install an XDVI separately, I found nothing but the teTeX version, its 
buttons don't work. I tend to think that the problem is not so much the 
name of the Linux distribution, rather: as a number of flaws of this Acer 
One Linux have been reported and I have found more of them, any failures of 
TeXLive installations on my tiny netbook may be due to flaws in its special 
operating system.

So I developped the view that the rise of "netbooks" in 2008 that were 
equipped with somewhat obscure Linux blends need special care from the TeX 
users community.

However, I wonder how many TeX users have bought such netbooks with Linux. 
It seems that netbooks originally were equipped with Linux just because 
Windows was too large. Microsoft had announced the end of Windows XP, but 
then it was revived for those netbooks. I wonder: has this made Linux on 
netbooks irrelevant? On the other hand, I have seen issues of computer 
magazines devoted to Ubuntu on netbooks.

Puuh ..., cheers,

     Uwe.




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