Article 170341 of comp.os.vms:
On 20 May 1997, Phillip Helbig wrote:

> What is the best way to install from scratch an up-to-date, bug-free and
> reasonably complete TeX (including LaTeX, METAFONT, XDVI, DVIPS etc) on
> a system running VMS 7.1?   Is there anything better than getting
> vms.zip from the nearest ftp.tex.xxx site from tex-archive/systems?  
> Will this contain all I need?

No, you need several .zip files, as a minimum. The deepest files are in
[tex.fonts_mf.amsfonts.doc.latex] on my system.

Getting TeX up is pretty easy. Thge pain is in 1) dvi drivers. If you
only need postscript, DVIPS is all you need, plus the scalable CM fonts
if you don't want to build the fonts for n printers. XDVI works OK, but
it does need 300dpi fonts. The MetaFont fonts are better than the Abobe
scaleable CM fonts, but that's opinion I guess.

Pain 2) is LAtex, and the 20 zillion packages, and the packages they
require... But, you don't need them all :) and most of the stuff is
pretty simple to get up and running. If anyone mentions Latex 2.09,
shoot them!

Oh, XDVI is braindamages in useing the MAKETEXPK.com to generate fonts
on the fly, Needs a logical defined to fix it. And MAKETEXPK.com is,
less than ideal. I hacked mine to death ( IE, it works good enough for me
for the moment... ) but it is still ugly.

There is a later DVIPS than the one in CTAN, or at least, that was so
last time I looked.

What you don't mention, is docs. Get `The Latex Companion' for yourself
and anyone doing tricky stuff, and Lamports `LaTeX', second edition for
`normal' use. You should also consider getting emacs as well, it does a
nice job for TeX, LaTeX, or BiBtex files, plus the is an info file for
latex on CTAN.

~Paul