I’d missed the xindy issue: I’ve never used it myself. However, a quick check through my installation reveals that you are correct: no xindy in MiKTeX.

Another great thing about TL is that it provides xindy for all platforms, AFAIK it is not included in MikTeX. Great for sorting indexes in non-English languages.

The thing with MiKTeX’s auto-install is that I can just start TeXing a file, and I won’t keep having to stop and install packages I don’t have. This is especially handy if you install as Administrator and use as a normal user.

My mistake on the DVI situation: corrected. On TeXworks, I’m looking here at differences: both systems include TeXworks, so it’s not directly relevant to the discussion.

I thought about mentioning LuaTeX, but at present the one in TeX Live is no good for ConTeXt Mark IV: you still need the minimals. So I’d think most people interested in LuaTeX will need to additonal work with either system.

My post is mainly about people wanting to use (La)TeX: that was the context I was asked about at work. So the underlying architecture of the installation system is not really relevant. As long as it works, I’m not fussed how it’s done.

Joseph

There is also a DVI viewer in TeX Live — dviout — so fans of this legacy format are not left out in the cold.

But the really big deal for this year in both, TeX Live and MiKTeX, is standardization on the TeXworks editor. This aspect is of major importance IMO.

Another factor worth mentioning is that TeX Live ships with Perl interpreter, so no additional installation is necessary to make use of multitude of Perl programs shipped with various packages and new ones are constantly developed.

Ah, and let’s not forget that there is LuaTeX in TeX Live already since last year, while it is still missing from MiKTeX.

Finally, something that should appeal to geeks, a lot of the infrastructure and tools are written in scripting languages (Perl and to a lesser extent Lua), which makes the whole system much more accessible to people who like to experiment.