[Mediawiki-l] Problem with the TeX installation on my webspace

[Platonides]

Steve VanSlyck wrote:
> While I understand what you are saying, I do not understand the problem. 
> Nearly every windows program out there is issued pre-compiled, 

With a nice installer containing all dependencies. What was the last 
windows program you bought whose instructions were "unzip in a folder 
and run"? They can be made, and in fact many directly run when copying 
its install folder... perhaps failing on systems without X 
redistributable dll/assemblies.
However, PE is not that bad. It's frustraiting when you pass a binary 
between linux systems (same distro) and fails because it's linked to a 
lib lying on a different directory and the path is hardcoded.


> and surely there are as many different windows hardware configs as there are 
> unix.

*nix supports more platforms. Almost every windows program you see is 
x86 32 bits. Now you start seeing dual distributions also with 64 bits 
versions. But 64 bits windows will run 32 bits apps (but not dlls).
PPC programs are completely different and won't work on x86.