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Miktex.org reports that there are currently 3162 packages.

What does a package mean?

In a most simple case it is a .sty file. But some .sty files load other .sty files, some of which can be used as separate package but some other cannot.

How does Miktex counts packages? I have a local copy of Miktex repository. It counts 3084 files most of which are of .lzma type. Could it be that miktex consider a .lzma file as a separate package?

And the last question: how can one evaluate number of installed packages? Miktex Package Manager shows that currently I have little more than 200 .lzma packages installed. Does it mean that more than 90% of the ctan repository is useless for a typical TeX user.

Igor Kotelnikov
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  • A MiKTeX package is not a LaTeX package. Some packages are bundles of LaTeX packages (typical example: amsmath contains 5 packages in the LaTeX sense). Some are dedicated to MiKteX binaries or MiKTeX configuration files. 2) What is a typical TeX user ? Maths packages are probably useless for the average student in Humanities, as are TikZ or pstricks. On the other hand, I'll probably never use xepersian, nor hieroglyphic, nor biblatex-philosophy.
    • – Bernard Oct 09 '16 at 11:25
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    @Bernard Even the humanities needs to draw cats :-). @ OP Even if it is true that 90% of the repository is useless for the typical user, it will not be the same 90%. Remember, too, that neither CTAN nor MikTeX supports only LaTeX. Also, compare something like a typical word processor. More than 90% of its features are probably useless to the typical user though, again, not necessarily the same 90%. (But there might be more common usage in the word processor case.) – cfr Oct 09 '16 at 12:24
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    See in the answer to Glossary of TeX and LaTeX terms the entries package (LaTeX) and package (generic). For your information, I always do a full install: saving a couple of GiB is not much of a problem nowadays. On the machine I'm using now, I have five complete versions of TeX Live (from 2012 to 2016). – egreg Oct 09 '16 at 12:58
  • @egreg: and how much of complete install are you using? I prefer miktex before TL much because miktex alows installing only those packages which are needed. – Igor Kotelnikov Oct 09 '16 at 13:08
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    @IgorKotelnikov There are hundreds of LaTeX packages I've never used and surely I could live without all the CJK part of TeX Live (including pTeX and derived engines) or the Cyrillic support (but I wouldn't be able to answer most of your questions). I cannot test MiKTeX for lack of a windows box, but several questions on the site point to problems with it, particularly with font management or with the automatic downloading: I wouldn't like to be in the final revision of an important document just to discover that the package I need cannot be downloaded because the site is down. – egreg Oct 09 '16 at 13:15
  • @egreg: If the site is down, you simply go to Dante or any CTAN mirror. Font management is a real problem, but it's easily solved: running updmap.exe to update psfonts.map and siblings. The main problem is it doesn't seem to be written in the documentation – Bernard Oct 09 '16 at 13:27