[tex-live] newbie configuration problems

[Karl Berry]

    AFAIK there's no tarball for 2008 yet).  

Yes there are.  Several.  See http://tug.org/texlive/acquire.html.
We are still in testing mode, but the release is approaching.

    fonts aren't included in TeX Live's source.tar.bz2, 

Right.  It includes the sources to the compiled programs.  Not the
(vast number of) support files.

There are tarballs/ISO images/rsync/svn/whatever for the texmf trees.

karl