[tex-live] problem with babel package

[Philipp Stephani]

Am 19.05.2011 um 08:37 schrieb Robin Fairbairns:

>> OTOH, as I am soon start to package TL2011 for Debian, I am open
>> for suggestions to improve the Debian/Ubuntu packaging? Do you
>> prefer one big package? I guess I will get killed for that ;-)
> 
> what the users _really_ need is "what we had before" (for each user).
> since i don't know what they had after their machine has been regrooved
> with the new os, this doesn't help much.

I think the most common problem for TeX Live in Ubuntu is that the packages are always outdated. For example, in 2009, Ubuntu still had TL 2007, and now they still have TL 2009. Since the TL package maintainers are usually volunteers, this makes it hard to support the Ubuntu packages upstream.
I don't think, however, that users should be recommended to install TL without the distribution's package manager. After all, the package management systems were created to avoid having to install everything by hand. Speaking of my (very limited) experience, I have never seen any of my colleagues install TL by hand (except one who was willing to experiment and got a suggestion from me). Therefore it is rather important that Ubuntu gets the newest TL version available.