Hello, ** C. Scott Ananian [2014-01-14 16:47:38 -0500]: > Please let's not talk about linux distributions. Most of what you say is > wrong.
It depends on your experience. At first, I wanted to give you links to official documentation that would clarify situation a bit but surprisingly I didn't find any clear and definite explanation in official documentation on TeX Live pages (tug.org/texlive). > TexLive releases once a year. That is correct. > So does Ubuntu. There is an effort to synchronize, so as a result a > given ubuntu release almost always contains the 'latest' texlive > release. And this seems to be correct but there are subtleties. > Further, the whole point of the apt-get system is that you can do > 'rolling' releases. I run debian/unstable, so I always have the > latest texlive bits. I seriously doubt, I switched long ago from Slackware to Ubuntu but just for a while, the reason was that I wanted "the bleeding edge", even for TeX Live provided by distribution, so now I use Archlinux and my distribution provides "latest" version of TeX Live, but I still use TeX Live distribution from TUG. Why? Because of these subtleties: TeX Live consists not only from binary programs but a huge number of different packages, 'packages' in terms of TeX world. Yes, the binaries are NOT updated between releases (AFAIR there were some 'official' information that they shouldn't, but sometimes they are updated too), but packages ARE updated continuosly, authors upload them on CTAN, see for example archive of 'ctan-ann' mailing list https://lists.dante.de/mailman/listinfo/ctan-ann or front page of TUG (www.tug.org, "Latest CTAN updates"), from which they are taken into (vanilla) TeX Live and these updates are meant in sec. 3.4.3 of TeX Live Guide http://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html#x1-330003.4.3 > If you are using a long term stable release, you have specifically > elected to freeze your packages and only get security updates. That's > your choice. > Yes, I'm not getting them my tex bits straight from CTAN, but the > distro packagers are pretty on-the-ball. Let's not insult them > unnecessarily. And I don't think anyone did this, even unintentionally. I think the only purpose was to remark that there is (big) difference between TeX Live provided by Linux distribution and vanilla TeX Live provided by TUG. The last one uses tlmgr to manage installation, and as it is said on page http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html System distributions all have their own packaging systems, so tlmgr is not used for TeX-related package updates by any distro that we know of. so anyone that uses (vanilla) TeX Live can get any updates by means of tlmgr tool, simply running $ tlmgl update --self --all or $ sudo tlmgr --self --all depending how was (vanilla) TeX Live installed (as normal user or as administrator, for example through sudo). While TeX Live installed by Linux distribution package manager, like apt-get, will get updates for packages, in terms of distribution, occasionally or on some schedule. > --scott > ps. see http://www.tug.org/texlive/distro.html if you have further questions. --- WBR, Vladimir Lomov -- Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. -- Alexander Pope -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
