Installing all the needed Latex dependencies on linux takes maybe 15 seconds, on windows I need 5GB of space and it takes forever to install.

I'm not praising windows, but that's simply not true and unfounded propaganda. I just installed the MiKTeX distro in under 5 minutes (including searching for the setup and downloading it), and now I'm good to go. Even after the following update progress, it takes 750 MB.
Maybe you want to clarify, what you mean by "all the dependencies".

That has to be a fuckup by the LaTeX team, given that I was able to use LaTeX on my Atari ST back in the 90s. The whole harddisk was 50 MB.

+1 for the above, use MikTex! It only installs the minimal components, and installs dependencies on the fly only the first time you use them!
I overlooked it the first time, but it is definitely a godsend! The guy maintaining the project (yes, just one guy) is an absolute boss for creating something so simple and perfect

@Forside MiKTeX is shipped without SyncTeX, which is needed for basically all of the full-suite + preview plugins I've come across, also 27 minutes and counting and it isn't even 30% done, so much about "propaganda".

@endor let me try to go that way, there was MikTex listed with a possible solution of adding in the .exe and .dll manually in, but we all know how well that usually works on windows.

@JoshBent I don't know about SyncTeX, but I didn't need it when I was writing my thesis. There were like 5, maybe a few more, addons that were installed, but never had to wait more than a few seconds. So I guess it's not something everybody needs.
But now I'm wondering, what is the difference between the OS's here? Shouldn't the dependencies be mostly the same files?

@JoshBent hmmm, I can't recall if MikTex's included editor has the same functionality as SyncTex, but I think it might actually do. It definitely has a side-by-side preview screen that gets updated on the fly after each recompile and works really nicely (to the point I actually prefer it to VSCode)

@Forside I am not a latex guru whatsoever, so "X missing in Y" is all I can say given the error messages and the known issues, installing MikTeX right now and going to copy the missing files in that some great people mirrored, hopefully that solves it, usually that only spawns another problem to fix though.

@endor I have vsCode across all my devices anyway for development, having latex work on all of them inside of it, would be the best solution to me either way - it wasn't a problem on arch at all, given the latex dependencies needed were readily available in the AUR.

@JoshBent Sadly I don't remember what editor/IDE I was using, can't recognize it right now from a quick search. It could be that it used SyncTeX under the hood, but nevertheless I didn't had to wait endlessly for it to install. What actually was a pain, was installing some different babel version with better features, because the integrated one didn't have what I needed. Had to manually integrate it into the MiKTeX installation. Somehow I got it working, but that was no fun.

Correcting my previous comment: I actually meant Biber, which uses BibLaTeX, which replaced BibTeX. That was really weird to setup and understand.

@endor @Forside Thanks guys, so the way of doing it was:

- install MikTex
- add the missing .exe and .dll from here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/quest...
- install latexmk with MikTex
- install strawberryperl: http://strawberryperl.com/

It works now, though for some reason the bulding and pdf generating is much slower than on my laptop, but I guess I can deal with that, just bit annoying not being able to instantly preview the changes.

@dontbeevil what a bliss it always is, remembering who you are, because every time I forget what a fucking ass blasted retard you are, you pop out of nowhere and remind me, by either taking random shit out of context, protecting microsoft (when nobody asked) or blaming any other company that isn't microsoft.

btw they (all tagged) weren't even blaming microsoft or windows, I was, so go and choke on it, you absolute monstrosity of a bot.

@dontbeevil your mental acrobatics reached their peak in vocabulary, huh?

@linuxxx get a load of this guy, he's still at it ever since (check comments and posts), I remember him atleast 5 times in your threads and mentions too (or any posts mentioning "windows" or "microsoft"), what a joke

@dontbeevil maybe it is time for you to sign up for an affiliate with microsoft?

@dontbeevil

@dontbeevil you're one of the reasons why devrant needs a block feature, you're so much full of shit with your microsoft propaganda, jesus christ

@dontbeevil very intriguing post, can you elaborate more on that?

If you install all extras, both Windows and Linux versions get to 5 GB. If you don't, that's where the difference in size & install time comes from.

And quite frankly, I believe you should never have to install all the extras! But there's just no way to know exactly what packages some latex document needs in order to compile... So we got this amazing, 5 GB clusterfuck of extras, just because we're trying to use an overly complicated hammer to loosen a screw.

@dontbeevil Well tbh, regardless of the system, when you install exactly the same on exactly the same setup (including networking, without the same OS maybe) and its way faster on one system, I'd say the system on which it goes a lot slower would be rightfully to blame.

Except for that, instead of insinuating that we 'just blame ms and windows',, could you elaborate that with any actual arguments? Without those it's a quite empty/worthless statement.

@linuxxx on the other hand, I installed my Win7 8 years ago. No reinstall since, no system hiccup, and can still install current applications. I've never had anything even close to that with Linux.

Counting the total time wasted with the system itself, Win7 wins hands down.

@Fast-Nop Fair enough, then windows wins for you :)

I've had it the other way around (when I still used windows years and years ago)

@dontbeevil I've read all the comments, notice the 'exact same setup' in my last comment ;)

@hitko The way those 5 gigs are delivered is what kills me most, 30+ minutes and it still didn't reach 30%, I've had tools and games that are beyond hundred gig and have had it downloaded and installed in the same time, I don't know what the fuck Tex live is doing, thank fuck for miktex which implemented it as a package management system, need latexmk? just download it.

@Fast-Nop I don't think a server mentality is appropriate for desktop use and even server should be updated as soon as the tagged (stable) branch gets released to prevent zombie servers - because of some funny bug being abused by skids.

You don't have to use bleeding edge, LTS is just fine and will work long enough without the need to update, though even LTS will prompt and background force specific updates.

@Fast-Nop I'd guess the potential for Linux to break over a short period of time is higher because you typically fiddle around with the system much more than with Windows, even if you don't do it manually, because pretty much every apt package integrates into multiple locations of the OS. I also had problems with packages that were incompatible with each other resulting in a broken apt state which I couldn't resolve (probably my incompetence, but still very frustrating and unobvious) that finally made me reinstall the system. On the other hand, if something in Windows breaks, most of the times it's simply unfixable without a reinstall, or nobody knows how to fix because the registry is a clusterfuck from an alien dimension.

@hitko which is exactly why MikTex has a builtin package manager for all the Latex stuff.
You don't need to know in advance which packages you need, you just include things in your file and when you build the first time you get a nice little popup saying: "Hey, you're missing some stuff, gonna install that on the fly for ya, ok? Cool"

@JoshBent The L in LTS is a joke, and because of the misdesign lumping together OS and applications in the packet manager, LTS means outdated applications under Linux, unlike under Windows. Application deployment under Linux has always been a nightmare, which is why you have to use containers to work around.

So it's upgrading the system every two years. But that often doesn't work, so better reinstall. Configure everything again because left-over config shit can break the new install. Old bugs are fixed sometimes, but new ones are there, so find new workarounds. With RR, you have that shit constantly because there is no quality control at desktop (just like Win10) because there's no serious money involved, unlike for server Linux.

I'll be switching back to Linux after Win7. While desktop Linux sucks, Win10 sucks even more. Progress is over, today it's damage control.

@Forside Reinstalling Windows was common in the days of Win95/98, as were BSOD. Both became better with XP, and given that my Win7 installation is 8 years old, I can say that it simply doesn't break. Though I must say that I hadn't expected that much stability.

The only shit that actually can break Windows is MS updates, which is why I have disabled them and update manually once per month (with the monthly rollup packet) if there are no issues reported. Exactly what MS has abolished with Win10 so that users are now beta testers who can't even decline while under Linux, I can at least choose when and whether to update.

@Fast-Nop I gotta disagree on windows 10, they have very great improvements since 7, but they destroy these by implementing linux WSL as an upcoming premium, fuck ton of spying and home calls, poorly tested data destructive updates, ..

ANY deployment is a nightmare to other systems not set up by you and even then you run into issues that new updates break shit, that is the reason why you see package version locks dominating anywhere and containers becoming a thing, to combat exactly that.

[cont.]

@Fast-Nop There is no reason nowadays not to update, windows does it in an ugly way, but it is the consequence of a mass adopted system that every retard has to be able to use, which with wannacry and others re-surfacing the old issue with floppy spread malware, has had to become the norm, so everybody is always up-to-date and protected against that kind of bullshit, so just because johnny has had a mental kick about not updating since 2007 he won't fuck all other machines in the network or open the network up to anybody to exploit other devices, e.g. printers.

@JoshBent There are good reasons to delay Windows updates these days - the fact that MS has cut down on QA and pushes immature shit that breaks the system. Or deletes local documents, as it just happened with Win10.

For me, it's a must-have OS feature that it doesn't fuck up itself just by idling along.

@Fast-Nop I had my Win7 running for around 6 years and I had the following problems:
After some uptime the window fields in the Taskbar and their title constantly lit up after hovering over them with the cursor. Same recently happened at my notebook with Win7. Also after creating a new file/folder or renaming one, the change wouldn't show up in the explorer until refreshing manually.
These were my long time windows bugs, but they didn't effect the usability of the system.

@Fast-Nop guess that's true too, what a shitfest, the model of keeping windows up-to-date was the right step, since as I said, people that infinitely delay security branch updates get themselves and others fucked, but now with that whole data destruction I can see why even those others would want to delay.

@dontbeevil how fast would you be on the trigger to say windows is much more stable, if e.g. somebody had his data broken in a similar fashion by linux? one could also say it "happened to only some users with specific configs".

@dontbeevil you see.. "shit can happens" [sic], the way you don't care about anything but protecting windows, I don't care about you, keep out of my sight with your bullshit, trash other peoples comment section.

@dontbeevil "shit can happens".. [sic] Enjoy 🙂

@dontbeevil "shit can happens".. [sic] Enjoy 🙂

@dontbeevil listen, I've had my good share of fun for now, but I lost any interest in your bullshit that just keeps giving and always lacks any proper arguments on topic, you discredited yourself finally by clearly saying that you're not interested and just here to continue your windows shitposting, fair warning, take them elsewhere and away from me.