ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/09/2013 05:55 PM, Kevin Godby wrote:

> Ah, okay. You're running TeX Live 2011. tlmgr doesn't let you upgrade
> from 2011 to 2012, so you have to download the TeX Live 2012 installer
> and run through the installation process again.
> 
> Since TeX Live 2013 will be released sometime in the next few weeks,
> I'd recommend just waiting for that so you don't have to run through
> the installation process twice.

But why?  What is the benefit, assuming texlive is only being used for
Ubuntu Manual, of using unpackaged Tex Live 2013 over Ubuntu Raring
packages?  What works better, or noticeably faster, or produces higher
quality manuals in the PDF output, in Tex Live 2013 compared to the
results using the packages?

Debian and Ubuntu use package management, to good effect.  Opting out of
that should only be done when there is really good reason to do so.
And, as of now, Ubuntu Raring has texlive 2012 packages that seem to be
good enough to produce Ubuntu Manual PDFs.

Logically, if someone is running an old non-packaged version of pretty
much *anything*, including texlive, for which newer official Ubuntu
packages already exist, the recommended way forward is to remove the old
unpackaged version completely, and then install the relevant packages
instead.  The result is a machine that is better managed overall (more
software under package manager control).  Why is this apparently not the
right approach for texlive?  I feel like I must be missing something.

Jonathan