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I personally use www.sharelatex.com (which is open sourced under the AGPL license). Downloading LaTeX locally on macOS (or rather, Mac OS X as it was called at

I personally use www.sharelatex.com (which is open sourced under the AGPL license). Downloading LaTeX locally on macOS (or rather, Mac OS X as it was called at the time) is not very difficult. As I recall, it's basically just: download this .pkg file, run it, and you're set. That being said, I did _not_ enjoy having LaTeX installed locally. It wasn't harmful, it just wasn't at all beneficial compared to using an online LaTeX service. The install size is easily tens of thousands of files (totalling a couple GBs), most of which are only a couple hundred KBs each. The vast majority of those files went unused. It clogged up my file system, gave me a marginal amount of benefits, and figuring out how to change the config files to do one _tiny_ thing was horrifically difficult. As a result, I migrated to using ShareLaTeX. It was just simpler than having to manage the install myself. The value proposition of a (hosted instance of) ShareLaTeX is that I can use LaTeX from any computer (connected to the Internet) to access any of my automatically synchronized files and have an automatically updated install of LaTeX. I personally found that value proposition worthwhile.

tagrun 10y ago
This is a false anecdotal dichotomy: either install latex on your computer at the cost of "clogging up your filesystem" (whatever that means), or give up your freedoms. textlive-most (which is a meta package which includes almost everything an ordinary user need) uses 1.2GBs on Arch Linux, so for sure it's not "couple of GBs". And even if it takes a couple of GBs: I'm using ~60GBs in my root filesystem, and never experienced any "clogging" (granted, GNU/Linux doesn't use Windows Registry). If installing programs "clogs up your file system" in Apple's proprietary fork of BSD (don't know/care how they call/stylize it these days), another viable option, before throwing away your freedoms, is to consider switching to a different filesystem or operating system which doesn't "clog up" when you install new programs (and which isn't riddled with backdoors and doesn't spy on you, like Apple products do: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.en.... ). Now I'm not sure whether this is an issue with HFS+ or a more general one within Darwin, but what is the point of having harddisks with large capacities (measured in TB these days) if you can't actually use it? > ShareLaTeX is that I can use LaTeX from any computer (connected to the Internet) to access any of my automatically synchronized files and have an automatically updated install of LaTeX. I personally found that value proposition worthwhile. I'm not seeing any convincing arguments or any "worthwhile propositions" here. With GNU/* and *BSD, that burden is on the package maintainers. System updates do include latex updates too (I know that it isn't the case with proprietary system you're using, but that's an argument for switching to a free/libre OS, not throwing away your freedoms). And I am able to synchronize my files (including .tex files) files across devices over the internet using syncthing, while still not yielding my rights and data to others, and there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to syncthing too. And even if your original dichotomy was a real dichotomy, I would encourage people to protect their freedoms, not to throw it away for convenience.
- tagrun 10y ago
  And before you say anything about conveniences of SaaSS in collaborative work flow: I'm a professor and I've been writing papers, posters, presentations, books, etc using latex for like 2 decades. I'm pretty sure I used LaTeX more than you, and for serious stuff. This is going to be anecdotal, and I'm not going to get into details but in one instance, parts of our paper has been leaked before publication by an intern at Google (some of us were using gmail). Since then, we all moved to a private mail server and we're encrypting our correspondences with our collaborators. I know that stuff like this happens rarely, but when it happens, it hurts you. Aside from principles regarding freedoms, or the creepiness of mass-surveillance, I've already been bit by "cloud" once, so I'm more careful about this than average person. So don't ask me to trust some random dude with a cool startup, or a well-known company with my important data.
- kevindong 10y ago
  > "clogging up your filesystem" In this context, I mean that in two ways (but mainly #2): 1) macOS has a feature (Spotlight) where I can search all of the files on my entire computer with a simple keyboard shortcut. >99% of the time, the result pops up within a second. I use that feature literally dozens of times each day. With LaTeX installed, I got a lot of results that are not relevant to what I want. In hindsight, I should've just disabled the indexing of the files in my install directory. 2) My computer (at the time) had a 64 GB hard drive. As a result, I was straining against the limits of that pretty hard. Uninstalling MacTeX (I believe that was the distribution I used) freed up at least 2 GB. I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy between your quoted figure of 1.2 GB and my experience. --- In addition, ShareLatex's UI was far superior to anything available for OS X (at least, at the time). My primary interest is in making myself as productive as possible. If using non-libre software gives me significant gains in productivity while not being unreasonable with their licensing terms/costs, then I will use it. That's the same reason I am using macOS. By using this proprietary piece of software, I do not have to tinkle with the inevitable strange bugs that pop up with the various libre options and therefore I am allowing myself to be the most productive I can possibly be. Every time I have tried using a libre OS, I have experienced some kind of bug that's simply impossible to diagnose and solve. In sum: the value proposition of non-libre software is increased productivity. I highly value productivity. So, I am willing to make the tradeoff. I recognize and accept that if everyone does this, the world is worse off. But, I am selfish and therefore am willing to make the tradeoff (to some extent; my willingness to tradeoff is not infinite). Sidenote: I could (technically) not throw away my freedoms by hosting my own instance of ShareLatex (as it is, now, licensed under the AGPL), but that's highly inconvenient and I have no interest in being a system admin. Again, this goes back to the idea of increased productivity by using "proprietary" services.

tagrun 10y ago

This is a false anecdotal dichotomy: either install latex on your computer at the cost of "clogging up your filesystem" (whatever that means), or give up your freedoms. textlive-most (which is a meta package which includes almost everything an ordinary user need) uses 1.2GBs on Arch Linux, so for sure it's not "couple of GBs". And even if it takes a couple of GBs: I'm using ~60GBs in my root filesystem, and never experienced any "clogging" (granted, GNU/Linux doesn't use Windows Registry). If installing programs "clogs up your file system" in Apple's proprietary fork of BSD (don't know/care how they call/stylize it these days), another viable option, before throwing away your freedoms, is to consider switching to a different filesystem or operating system which doesn't "clog up" when you install new programs (and which isn't riddled with backdoors and doesn't spy on you, like Apple products do: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.en.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-surveillance.en.... ). Now I'm not sure whether this is an issue with HFS+ or a more general one within Darwin, but what is the point of having harddisks with large capacities (measured in TB these days) if you can't actually use it? > ShareLaTeX is that I can use LaTeX from any computer (connected to the Internet) to access any of my automatically synchronized files and have an automatically updated install of LaTeX. I personally found that value proposition worthwhile. I'm not seeing any convincing arguments or any "worthwhile propositions" here. With GNU/* and *BSD, that burden is on the package maintainers. System updates do include latex updates too (I know that it isn't the case with proprietary system you're using, but that's an argument for switching to a free/libre OS, not throwing away your freedoms). And I am able to synchronize my files (including .tex files) files across devices over the internet using syncthing, while still not yielding my rights and data to others, and there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to syncthing too. And even if your original dichotomy was a real dichotomy, I would encourage people to protect their freedoms, not to throw it away for convenience.

tagrun 10y ago
And before you say anything about conveniences of SaaSS in collaborative work flow: I'm a professor and I've been writing papers, posters, presentations, books, etc using latex for like 2 decades. I'm pretty sure I used LaTeX more than you, and for serious stuff. This is going to be anecdotal, and I'm not going to get into details but in one instance, parts of our paper has been leaked before publication by an intern at Google (some of us were using gmail). Since then, we all moved to a private mail server and we're encrypting our correspondences with our collaborators. I know that stuff like this happens rarely, but when it happens, it hurts you. Aside from principles regarding freedoms, or the creepiness of mass-surveillance, I've already been bit by "cloud" once, so I'm more careful about this than average person. So don't ask me to trust some random dude with a cool startup, or a well-known company with my important data.
kevindong 10y ago
> "clogging up your filesystem" In this context, I mean that in two ways (but mainly #2): 1) macOS has a feature (Spotlight) where I can search all of the files on my entire computer with a simple keyboard shortcut. >99% of the time, the result pops up within a second. I use that feature literally dozens of times each day. With LaTeX installed, I got a lot of results that are not relevant to what I want. In hindsight, I should've just disabled the indexing of the files in my install directory. 2) My computer (at the time) had a 64 GB hard drive. As a result, I was straining against the limits of that pretty hard. Uninstalling MacTeX (I believe that was the distribution I used) freed up at least 2 GB. I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy between your quoted figure of 1.2 GB and my experience. --- In addition, ShareLatex's UI was far superior to anything available for OS X (at least, at the time). My primary interest is in making myself as productive as possible. If using non-libre software gives me significant gains in productivity while not being unreasonable with their licensing terms/costs, then I will use it. That's the same reason I am using macOS. By using this proprietary piece of software, I do not have to tinkle with the inevitable strange bugs that pop up with the various libre options and therefore I am allowing myself to be the most productive I can possibly be. Every time I have tried using a libre OS, I have experienced some kind of bug that's simply impossible to diagnose and solve. In sum: the value proposition of non-libre software is increased productivity. I highly value productivity. So, I am willing to make the tradeoff. I recognize and accept that if everyone does this, the world is worse off. But, I am selfish and therefore am willing to make the tradeoff (to some extent; my willingness to tradeoff is not infinite). Sidenote: I could (technically) not throw away my freedoms by hosting my own instance of ShareLatex (as it is, now, licensed under the AGPL), but that's highly inconvenient and I have no interest in being a system admin. Again, this goes back to the idea of increased productivity by using "proprietary" services.