[tex-live] (no subject)

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2018-09-18 at 15:45:01 -0400, Michael Shell wrote:

 > Sandisk 16GB USB flash drives can now be had for $5.49:

Still much too expensive in order to offer them for free to members of
TeX user groups.  DVDs are very cheap.

But the main problem is there is no filesystem appropriate for all
operating systems.  I've heard that recent versions of Windows allow
to mount ISO9660 images if they are files on an NTFS filesystem but do
not recognize an ISO9660 filesystem on a USB stick.

We already considered UDF, which is supposed to be platform
independent.  But it's still not supported by all systems and it seems
that it will never be.  I do not see any progress.

 > Another approach would be to go to a 2 DVD package, but we'd be
 > riding a linear, not exponential, media capacity wave there.

Yes, this can only solve the problem in the next two or three years.
It's not really a solution, though removing stuff is also painful.

The current size of MiKTeX is 2.7 GB. I'll never understand why
Christian insists on doing everything himself instead of simply
adapting his system so that MiKTeX can use at least the platform
independent TeX Live packages.

I'm sure that almost everybody is using the network installer
nowadays.  For the few users with unsuffient internet access in
developing countries we definitely find individual solutions.

Regards,
  Reinhard



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