[tex-live] Live CD

[Peter Flynn]

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 00:39, Karl Berry wrote:
> What I would do is start with the live image, remove all the binaries
> you are not interested in, and see how much more has to go after that.
> The sources are probably the only other big thing that is easy to
> remove.  Whether that will get you to 700mb, I don't know.  I doubt it.
> Probably have to start removing packages.  Good luck :).

It looks like if I can find the filelist for the "minimal" install
this comes in at around 350Mb.

> BTW, some directory on the hard disk will still have to be writable, so
> the format files, among other things, can be created.  Hopefully the
> sysadmins will permit that much.  (I've kind of thought we should
> include format files in the distribution, so that we could have
> something that was truly live, but it hasn't happened yet.)

Yes, I was surprised (not having followed the list) to find that TL2005
generates formats for each new user the first time you use it, and
stuffs them into a .directory in your login directory. Very weird way
to go when you're used to the whole system having one .fmt file for
each app, stored centrally. I'd lobby VERY hard for not doing this,
and for including the .fmt files in the distro.

> If you do come up with a live CD image, it would be a nice thing to have
> available for others, so let me know, ok?

Absolutely. I'm aiming to do CD and USB.

///Peter