[tex-live] [Fwd: Re: TeXLive Perl + latexmk (windows)]

[Diederick C. Niehorster]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Reinhard Kotucha
<reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> On 14 April 2010 Philipp Stephani wrote:
>
>  > Am 13.04.2010 um 14:55 schrieb Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard:
>  >
>  > > Not that I'm a big fan of windows, but let's not exaggerate the
>  > > problems with this system.
>  >
>  > There are no substantial problems with Windows, only wrong
>  > expectations. If you expect Windows to behave like Linux, you're
>  > going to be disappointed. MikTeX is popular because it feels like a
>  > native Windows application, while TeX Live still seems to be biased
>  > towards Linux.
>
> Because TeX Live avoids the crappy Widows registry, or what?  Nothing
> within TeX Live is Linux-specific or platform-specific at all.  TeX
> Live just supports ***all*** operating systems which are in use today.
> There is absolutely no reason why people shouldn't use TeX Live under
> Windows.
>
> Can you explain why Windows users should use MikTeX instead of TeX
> Live?  Did you ever try TeX Live on Windows yourself?  If yes, what's
> wrong with TeX Live?

Having switched from MixTeX to TeX Live very recently, I found TeX
Live very easy to use (as is MikTeX for that matter) and I was
especially happy with the included perl distributions that made a
whole bunch of scripts simply executable (I trying to use some font
installation tools and quickly decided to change to TeX Live on which
this appeared more natural to me, a novice at anything distribution
related). I'm happy it ignores the registry (why can't programs simply
use a local config file?).

My only less positive experience with it is that the tlmgr and the
installer interface appear extremely slow/inresponsive, on both XP
32bit SP3 and windows 7 64bit. For instance, I ended up downloading
the DVD and installing from there as the download progress appeared
stuck. The update after the install (300 something packages) also
proved hazardous, not haveing completed after several hours and the
GUI being frozen. Command-lining things, all worked fine and fast
though ;) does anybody have similar experiences on windows?

Best,
Dee