[Discuss] Package Management is Bane of Latex

[George Farris]

Hi Alan,

I totally understand your desire to run Debian stable and concentrate on
your research.  One can get very carried away futzing with computers.

I did run Debain testing, have used Linux since, well lets just say my
first install was SLS, so 1996 or so.  Before that it was Minix, SCO Unix
and Esix.

If I had my choice for a rolling distro, I find Arch to be better suited
and just as stable, if not more, than Debian testing.  I've had a few bad
experiences with Debian Testing over the years.  Arch packages are simpler
to build, easier to downgrade if one wants and building from the AUR is a
snap, if a binary package isn't available.  Arch used to be a royal pain
but in the last year and a half it's been nothing but joy for me.

The one thing I like is I can install Arch (usually use Antergos) and have
a very minimal install, then add things like Libreoffice, audio player of
choice etc.  Just what I want with none of the cruft.

Cheers
George


On Mon, 2016-09-26 at 11:46 -0700, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> On 2016-09-26 11:01-0700 George Farris wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Well I always like to encourage people to be life long learners and
> > changing your distribution can be a very positive experience.
> > I like Debian, ran it for years, it's still on my laptop but Arch is
> > just
> > sooo. much nicer for me.  A great rolling distro and I don't have to
> > wait
> > months for the next update to a package to appear.  Debian just seems
> > stale
> > once you used Arch.  But hey, each to his own:-)
> > 
> > Try it you might like it.
> 
> Hi George:
> 
> I prefer to do creative research work and learning using my desktop
> computer rather than spending my creative energies fiddling with that
> computer too much.  So I admit to being fairly conservative about
> trying new desktops.  In fact, I am still running Debian stable (which
> is now ~1.5 years old which indeed makes it quite stale).  But if I
> get too fed up with that staleness, I plan to switch to Debian testing
> which is a rolling release which a lot of Debian desktop users prefer
> to use over stable. (In fact, I believe Debian was the distribution
> that first invented the concept of rolling releases many years ago.)
> 
> Just out of curiosity, did you actually try Debian testing before you
> largely gave up on that distro?  The last time I tried Debian testing
> there were typically many package updates per day so the impression I
> got at the time (several years ago) was it was pretty close to the
> cutting edge.
> 
> Alan
> 
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and
> Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
> 
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
> implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
> Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
> software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
> (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
> and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
> 
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