[tex-live] teTeX: no next release

Peter Flynn peter at silmaril.ie
Sun Jun 4 21:30:21 CEST 2006


Juergen Fenn wrote:
> I generally agree, but I remember two complaints on ctt (one of them
> lately) about TeX distributions having grown too large for older
> computers.

I think this may be true if you try to install everything, but I have
recently had to install TeX on three old-desktops-recycled-to-servers
(basically 300MHz processor, 2.5Gb disk, 256Mb memory) and with 128Mb
more memory I managed to trim down FC5 to just over 1Gb and installed
TL basic so that some graduate students have somewhere to do their
theses. It's not ideal, but in an academic environment where there is
zero money available it *is* just possible.

During a tidy-out recently I found an old 30Mb HardCard (for the benefit
of younger readers, this was a hard disk mounted on a standard PC card
so you literally opened the lid, put it in, and closed the lid and you
suddenly had an extra 30Mb hard disk). On it I discovered a complete
copy of WordStar 1512 and emTeX, so I stuffed it into a colleague's XP
system and rebooted, and was able to open a command window, edit a file
run it through LaTeX, print it to disk using dvihp, and copy/b to the
attached printer :-)

///Peter, not now knowing WTF to do with the 30Mb HardCard...


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