[tex-live] The suggestions (from tex-d-l) (Re: Comment on Re: TeXLive-CD/DVD (Installation))

[Oliver Bandel]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 12:47:19PM +0100, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> I do wonder whether all this is worth the effort. I know
> 4 hours is horribly slow, but you only do it once a year.
> Of course, if its easy to rewrite the install scripts
> to be more efficient, that's great, but not if it
> takes weeks of work.

Well, if the person who installs would at least know, that it
takes four hours, than this would be fine.

On that day (night) I installed a debian (via netinstaller-CD)
for a friend. It took a while, but not very long.
After I installed some additional programs he wanted to have,
I said, he needs TeX also, it's an absolute MUST-HAVE.
(It's his first Linux-PC and his first TeX-installation.)
We started in the night, and I thought it might need about
half an hour. As it was three o'clock in the morning he
was to tired and left (without his new 64-Bit PC).

Such a new technique, and so slow. And so tired people,
and so discouraged/annoyed with the first TeX-installation.

A good start?

In the README there was no warning.

If there would have been one EMPHASIZED sentence,
which warns, that the installation might need several
hourse even on fast machine, we had not installed it.

Maybe that would have been the better way...

> 
> Someone doing it for many machines would surely
> copy from the DVD first?

Someone who installs it once can be really annoyed.
After that annoying exoerience I did NOT install texlive
on my new PC. Two reasons: a) I prefer source-distributions
(e.g. Gentoo is fine), b) teTeX was fine c) this installation
procedure also let me dislike this distribution.
So my PC has no TeX installed and I use my Mac as long
as I do not have TeX on my PC.

Maybe this is a non-pragmatical, idealistic attitude,
but when I have a fast PC, and we have the year 2007,
I can await to have a fast installation.

The textmenue is OK, so using the installation
is fine. But to wait to long, is NOT fine.

I hope the next texlive will be more suited for
people who want to install TeX once.
Or maybe it should be mentioned, that there (somewhere)
are inst-Distributions, especially for installation,
which are best for a quick installation,
and that texlive is a no-no when people are interested
in installing.


My personal opinion:
 I hate ineffective and non-elegant software and machines.
 BTW, that's the reason why I use TeX/LaTeX, because it helps
 to create fine printed, sophisticated documents in a
 convenient way.
 The installation procedure (and the underlying software) also
 should be as fine, IMHO.

 Nobody is perfect, but to say it doesn't matter, IMHO
 is not the way to do it better next time.
 If it works, but is ugly this time; ok. That's life.
 But next time we (should, IMHO) do it better.


Ciao,
   Oliver

P.S.: If installation time of TeX-istributions outweights the
      text-editing times, when using Word for your documents
      (at least subjective), then people will not try TeX.

       Something like:
          "Last time I tried to install TeX. People say, it is
          not as complicated, as I heard of. And it saves time,
          when you edit your documents. I should use it for my diploma.,
          So I started to install it from this DVD. After two hours I stopped
          it, and never touched it again."