From: Hans Hagen
i remember from long ago that there's also some path trickery involved (btw, i'm not sure where the binaries live)
Hmm, tell me more about that if you remember.
well, tetex adding tex related bin paths to the (user) profile files which then could clash with other tex installations
That is hopefully a thing of the past. I just checked all the texmf.cnf files it sees, and it's only the system default even though I have ~/.texmf-{config,var} directories made by tetex. $ kpsewhere texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf This global texmf.cnf includes those two directories by default (at least with tetex-3.0). A snip from there: TEXMFHOME = $HOME/texmf TEXMFVAR = $HOME/.texmf-var TEXMFCONFIG = $HOME/.texmf-config TEXMF = {$TEXMFCONFIG,$TEXMFVAR,$TEXMFHOME,$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFDIST} -Sanjoy `Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.' --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.