[texworks] back and forth between source tex and pdf?

[Karl Berry]

    Is this texlive 2009 compilable on RedHat EL 5.3 (or 5.4)? 

Sure.  I am using it on CentOS 5.4.  The i386-linux binaries we provide
were intentionally built on an old system (Debian sarge), so at worst
you should have to install some "compatibility" libraries.

You don't have to build it yourself from source (and I wouldn't advise
doing so unless you really want to).  See http://tug.org/texlive for the
various ways of getting it.

Hope this helps,
Karl