[tex-live] Live CD

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Peter Flynn wrote:

>>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 :-)
>  
>
if the use of TeX is necessary for the academic work, don't
accept that attitude.

>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).
>  
>
which is fine if you run from the DVD :-}

all you need do is copy the bin/win32 directory and the texmf* trees
from the DVD to a USB key, add (eg) e:\bin\win32 to your PATH,
and its done. OK, so it'll be a fairly big USB key you'll want
(a 1Gb will do it). Probably easier to just get the folks to buy a DVD
player.

sorry to be negative, but I do think your users need to take
charge of their lives, and

 a) establish a proper relationship with the admins to get the software
     they need supported properly
 b) stop thinking that buying a new PC or a DVD drive is expensive

the amount of time they waste fooling with their computers anyway
would, if charged out at FEC, more than pay for a shiny new box.

sebastian