tex live 2021 installation question

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Wed Aug 18 23:48:56 CEST 2021


Hi Bob,

    Similarly, tug.org recommends using their installer---not the 
    linux distribution's package manager.

I don't exactly "recommend" using the native TL installer. Do I?
Have I forgotten what I wrote? If you can tell me where you saw this,
I'd like to review it.

What I intend to say in this regard is that 1) if you use the distro
version, please don't expect our instructions and descriptions to apply,
and 2) often distros are not up to date (but sometimes they are).

In general, plenty of people use TL as packaged by their distros, and
that's perfectly fine. I'm happy when anyone uses TeX in any way they
wish :). 

    install Tex Live into their home directory by resetting TEXDIR.

Where "TEXDIR" is a setting that only exists inside install-tl.
It's not an environment variable that you can set and will magically
change everything. At least not in upstream TL. (And I'd be quite
surprised if any distro supports such a TEXDIR envvar, but what do I know.)

Thanks for the nice summary, in any case. --best, karl.


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