[tex-live] Live CD

[Peter Flynn]

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 23:46, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Peter Flynn wrote:
> 
> > I have had a number of enquiries from users with older equipment
> > (no DVD drive) about whether it is possible to extract and burn a
> > Live CD because their admins have the machines locked down tight
> > and they can't install MikTeX -- but they could run from CD.
> 
> you mean just TeX,  or the whole OS?

Just TeX. 

> > Failing that, has anyone done a run-from-USB distro? Or tested
> > having a complete system installed on a USB drive?
> 
> A colleague and I gave a 2 hour talk last night using my laptop
> booted into Knoppix from a USB key. Works a treat. IFFF your
> machine can boot from USB, which your users probably can't.

Sorry, I didn't mean the OS, I meant TeX. 

> But why not just talk to the admins? doing things underhand
> will just lead to tears.

Because the admins concerned are BOFHs who don't want nasty difficult
stuff like TeX cluttering up their nice disks :-)

All the users want to do (under Windows) is put in the Live CD, open
their document off floppy or USB or over the network, and run LaTeX,
Acrobat or a DVI viewer, and print (maybe dvips).

///Peter