I have been using a portable version of Lyx 1.6 like some people have been using Windows XP. Recently, I have found a portable version of Lyx 2.0 – so, I finally migrated.
Portable apps are applications that can run without requiring administrative access because it does not write anything to system directories or the registry in Windows. What this means is that you can have the program files on your USB drive and run the program on any computer. While I do not run programs via my USB stick, I use them on my computer because they give me the peace of mind of knowing that when they are not running, they are not taking up any computing resources. It also means that should I need to uninstall the program, I just delete the folder and it will have zero chance of screwing up my system files. This is particularly worrying since Lyx requires installing of some TeX package – such as Miktex
The version of Portable Lyx 2.0 I find is hosted at https://code.google.com/p/lytex/. It runs well. The only two issues I have so far are:
- LyTeX\LyX\imagemagick\convert.exe triggers a virus alert. However, doing at scan at Virus Total shows that only one scanner gives a positive.
- I use the advice here to add a keyboard shortcut for exporting as PDF. However, instead of using “buffer-export pdflatex” as instructed by the website, I use buffer-export pdf4. (I.e., PDF(XeTex))
Reference: LyTeX Portable LaTeX Suite [Lytex],
Add shortcut for “Export -> PDF(pdflatex)” on LyX’s toolbar [Cloudly's Blog]