[tex-live] Why has initex disappeared?

[Thomas Esser]

> ps. actually, with regards to compatibility i'm more concerned about the 
> fact that last years tex binaries no longer run on freshly installed 
> linux's (this library thing); it makes it nearly impossible to run older 

I can run all teTeX versions on my system, even teTeX-0.2.1 which was
released more than 10 years ago. It is all free software. If the binaries
don't run, just recompile them.

    $ /t/0.2.1/i/bin/latex small2e
    This is TeX, Version 3.1415 (C version 6.1)
    (/t/0.2.1/i/texmf/tex/latex/base/small2e.tex
    LaTeX2e <1994/06/01> patch level 4
    Hyphenation patterns for english, german, loaded.
    (/t/0.2.1/i/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls
    Document Class: article 1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class
    (/t/0.2.1/i/texmf/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
    No file small2e.aux.
    [1] (small2e.aux) )
    Output written on small2e.dvi (1 page, 1720 bytes).
    Transcript written on small2e.log.

Thomas