I just ran my routine update script. For the fourth time today. And I’m hit with 2029 updated packages. Image is a screenshot of zypper displaying the updated packages. I had to zoom out very far. Who knew that having texlive installed would do something like this lol
It was a full replacement for me, but I was only using it for personal use.
If you need a unique and specific package, you might have trouble finding it since the LaTeX ecosystem has been around for decades longer. The other drawback would be collaboration and interacting with journals, where the people that grew up with LaTeX might be resistant to changing to something new. I’m not personally in the research side now, so I can’t comment on it much further. I would assume that adoption also varies by the field of research.