[tex-live] Is the TeX Live 2018 installer (for Windows) considerably slower than previous years

[Philip Taylor]

Philip Taylor wrote:
> On an Intel I7 machine with 16Gb RAM, the 2018 Tex Live installer, installing from a local Rsynch'ed repository, is less than 1/3 of the way through ("Installing elvish") after an hour and a quarter (1H15); this seems very much slower than I have experienced in the past with earlier TeX Live installers.  Is this to be expected, and if so, what is the cause please ?

P.S.  What is the reason for the installer change whereby the root directory has to be specified as three separate parts (Drive letter, root, year) ?  This whole interface is very clunky in Windows (and has been for as long as I can remember, ignoring (e.g.,) select-all followed by overtype — nothing gets erased), requiring <return> rather than {OK] and so on), and is now three times worse since I have to interact with three clunky dialogue boxes rather than one. What is gained by this separation ?

** Phil.