[tex-live] a little experience with TL 09

[Lars Madsen]

yesterday and today a local student organisation helped installing TL09 
on several users laptops. (after they gave a great Intro talk about LaTeX)

I had previously downloaded/rsync'ed tlnet to several USB sticks and 
provided them as installation medias (in ealier years we have had bad 
experiences with mass installation from DVDs so we didn't try this year)

On my testing laptop installation from the USB took ~7 min under Linux 
Mint 7 and ~20 min under Win XP.


Most users were using Windows Vista plus a few XPs


Installation from USB was quickly abandoned as it took too long (and 
because of the limited number of USB sticks).

Instead tlnet was copied to disk and the users installed from this.

Installation speeds range between 20 to 80 minutes

I think it is rather interesting that it takes so long time for it to 
install under Vista. (bad I/O handling?)


Regarding TeXWorks:

* all users was introduced to TeXWorks as their first editor.

* they seemed happy with it, very interested in the synctex feature.

* One problem though: Several times when a new user started TeXWorks, 
wrote a sample doc and wanted to save it, the 'save as' dialogue box 
started in C:/windows/system32 (or something similar) and then TeXWorks 
would crash.

Usually things went back to normal after a reboot, but not great for a 
first impression.


/daleif