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TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!)

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> wrote:
> On 04/07/2016 11:26 PM, JohnF wrote:
> [...]
>> Question: Is there some tl-lite distribution, or some install-tl 
>> script that >>automatically<< lightens it up? Slackware has stuck 
>> with teTeX because tl is too "heavy". While it's easy enough to run
>> install-tl and manually choose components, it would be nice to have a
>> maintained install-tl-lite script so that the Slackware team could
>> easily package tl with their linux distribution. I'd guess they'd
>> want something in the ~250MB size (that's about what their teTeX
>> uses).
> 
> I believe that if you install texlive from (eg Debian) repos, as
> distinct from texlive-full, that is pretty much what you get, but I
> always install texlive-full myself, so I can't guarantee that.

Thanks, Peter. I've cross-posted to alt.os.linux.slackware, where
a texlive thread has recently been active.
   I'd guess the Slackware team wouldn't be happy using debian repos,
though I can't speak for them. Actually, it seems remarkably easy to
construct a tl-lite for Slackware, just using the existing install-tl
script:
   (a) run install-tl, select components comprising your "lite" version,
       and install that in /usr/share/texlive/ (or /where/ever) directory,
   (b) tarball it for a "texlive series" in the slackware distribution,
   (c) add an /etc/profile.d/texlive.sh script for paths, etc (and
       chmod the tetex scripts so they don't execute)
I can only guess it's the "select components" part that has the
Slackware team stymied. Maybe an additional install-tl option
that lets users select a "very lite" (100MB), "lite" (250MB), etc
option, and then automatically selects an appropriate subset
of tl components. Since that option would be maintained by the
texlive team, maybe tweaking selected component subsets year-to-year,
slackware maintainers wouldn't have to worry about components.

--- additional remarks regarding original (now snipped) post ---
>
> I do remember using both PCTeX (which is indeed still going strong) and
> emTeX in the short period between VAX and Unix when I actually used a
> DOS system. The whole thing fitted on a few floppies, I suspect. I think
> I may still have a copy installed on one of those mid-1990s HardCard?
> 20Mb hard-disk-on-a-card systems that I discovered lurking in the office
> a year or so ago. I stuck it in a Windows PC and the disk was working
> fine and I noticed WordStar 1512, PC-Write, and TeX were on it.
> ///Peter

Yeah, I had PCTeX on a Plus Hardcard 40MB disk, on a dual-floppy
DOS-based PC, in the late 1980's. Times have changed: my very first
programming was on an IBM 1620 in the late 1960's, which had 40K memory,
two 20MB hard disks, executed ~50K instructions/second, and rented
from IBM for ~$10K/month. My current desktop cost ~$1K (so let's
say 1/100 the cost), has almost half a million times the memory,
50,000 times the disk capacity, and a million times the speed (counting
all cores). If you multiply all those factors, it's 2.5x10^18 times
improvement (and that's not even counting ~10^-3 times smaller/lighter
and ~10^3 times more reliable, which would literally bring the factor
up to ~twice Avogadro's number) over, say, 50 years. So that's
~2.33 times/year, pretty much in line with Moore's law. Over that
same time, top car speed has maybe doubled, gas mileage maybe doubled,
etc, so maybe an overall factor of 10 if you want to be generous.
If cars had improved like computers, they'd cost $10, fly to the Moon
in half a minute using a thimbleful of gas, etc. Computers (electronics
in general) have improved faster and more dramatically than anything
in human experience -- faster by more than a factor of a trillion.
It's hard to comprehend or appreciate what we're looking at.
So, yeah, "Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!", ditto Thomas Esser, and all
the people who contributed to that trillion.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

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Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes! jfine2358@gmail.com - 2016-04-07 02:36 -0700
  Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes! JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2016-04-07 22:26 +0000
    Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes! Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> - 2016-04-07 23:46 +0100
      TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2016-04-08 23:12 +0000
        Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 05:03 +0000
          Re: TeXLive on Slackware John Forkosh <forkosh@panix.com> - 2016-04-11 07:11 +0000
            Re: TeXLive on Slackware Joost Kremers <joost.m.kremers@gmail.com> - 2016-04-11 08:59 +0000
              Re: TeXLive on Slackware jfbu <jfREMOVEbu@free.fr> - 2016-04-11 11:41 +0200
                Re: TeXLive on Slackware JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2016-04-13 02:20 +0000
            Re: TeXLive on Slackware Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 21:07 +0000
          Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Joost Kremers <joost.m.kremers@gmail.com> - 2016-04-11 08:54 +0000
            Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 21:12 +0000
              Re: TeXLive on Slackware Qun-Ying <zhu.qunying@gmail.com> - 2016-04-13 11:13 -0700
                Re: TeXLive on Slackware Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-13 18:39 +0000
      Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes! Dan Luecking <LookInSig@uark.edu> - 2016-04-13 12:52 -0500

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