[tex-live] (no subject)

[George N. White III]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 at 19:44, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
>
> 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.

You have to buy a new DVD every year.    USB flash drives could be
returned for updating.   Local user groups could do this with disk to
disk copying.

>
> 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.

There should be no need for a filesystem that supports huge files.
FAT32 is widely supported but needs large sector sizes for large
media.   This may not be a problem for a filesystem populated with
archives.   VFAT (long filenames) has been supported in linux for
years.

> 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.
> [...]
>
> 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.

Even in some developed countries, internet access for many
people uses cellular data.  While there is often internet access
at schools, coffee shops, and libraries, it isn't practical to run
a download that takes an hour.

In remote areas and ships at sea, internet requires expensive
satellite links.

-- 
George N. White III