General ⇒ LaTeX on Ubuntu

[s0198362]

Hi all, I hope this forum can provide me with advice.

I used to run MikTeX and winedt on windows. I liked the install on the fly option, so that I didn't have to have all the latex packages installed.

I have just switched my operating system to Ubuntu 10.04. I am a complete beginner and am wondering what is the best way to get LaTeX working.

I have read about Kile and gedit which both look suitable editors, but how do I get Latex onto my machine? I see Mixtex has a unix installer or there is Tex Live. Do Kile or gedit install missing packages on the fly, or do I have to have everything installed before compiling my documents?

If I use the miktex manager, does it update my latex pacakges to the same place as TeXlive would? If not, how do I set kile or gedit to look at the MikTex area, rather than what I assume is the default texlive folders.

Thanks

[frabjous]

There isn't an option to install on the fly with texlive, unfortunately.

But otherwise using LaTeX under Ubuntu (or other versions of linux) provides you with a lot of choices and freedom not available in Windows.

If you've got free disk space (~1 GB), I'd recommend just installing the *entirety* of texlive. That way, you'll have everything installed and won't need to worry about missing packages:

From a terminal type in:

sudo apt-get install texlive-full

That'll give you *everything*.

If you don't have free disk space, then just go with the default installation. If you install kile or the gedit-latex-plugin (or other latex editor), it will "pull in" the base texlive installation as a dependency which has a good assortment of the most used packages.

sudo apt-get install gedit-latex-plugin

or

sudo apt-get install kile

If you find things are missing, it would probably be a matter of looking at the other texlive packages (browsing in Synaptic under "TeX authoring", or search for texlive in Synaptic) and finding what you need.

One problem with kile is that it is KDE based, so if you are using regular Ubuntu (rather than Kubuntu) running GNOME rather than KDE, it'll have a lot of KDE dependencies as well. Still, it's an awesome editor, and it runs fine under GNOME. Just don't be surprised at the number of things it brings in. The gedit plugin is fine, though it helps to know gedit fairly well or it may seem less feature rich than kile.

If you do install kile you'll probably want to install Okular, which does forward/reverse search with Kile (or with some work, with gedit too):

sudo apt-get install okular poppler-data

There are other editors out there to consider as well:

For TeXmaker:
sudo apt-get install texmaker

For TeXworks:
sudo apt-get install texworks

For AucTeX (an extension of GNU/Emacs)
sudo apt-get install auctex

For the VIM LaTeX suite:
sudo apt-get install vim-latexsuite

For LyX:
sudo apt-get install lyx

And some other editors like geany work fine for LaTeX editing too.

If you want an editor with a live-updating preview (though not that great otherwise), look at gummi:
http://gummi.midnightcoding.org/

(The above assumes you're using Lucid. For older versions of Ubuntu, I'd bypass the packages, since only Lucid has TL 2009.)

[s0198362]

Thanks for the info. Looks like I'll just have to install the whole lot. Seems a shame really.

When the packages get updated on CTAN, does the Ubuntu package manager update too?

[josephwright]

No. If you want to be able to manage your own updates, install the "vanilla" TeX Live and use tlmgr (first removing Ubuntu's packaged TeX Live, of course).

[frabjous]

There have been some updates already of the Ubuntu texlive 2009 packages in Lucid, even since Lucid's release. How quickly these are done is really up to the package's maintainers. But you'll definitely get more frequent updates if you install Vanilla TeXlive/tlmgr, since that tracks the CTAN mirrors directly. Probably not necessary for most users.

The real trouble, however, with using vanilla TeXlive and tlmgr is that Ubuntu's package manager won't know you have texlive installed, and so won't allow you to install anything that has texlive as a depencency, such as any of the LaTeX editor packages (kile, etc.), or converters like hevea or latex2rtf. There are some tricks to get around this, but it's not worth it in my opinion. (At least not right now then the Ubuntu packages are relatively up to date.)

But if you don't mind bypassing the package manager for things like editors and converters, and are willing to build those from source, for example, I guess that's another option.

[s0198362]

Thanks for all the info Joseph and frabjous. I have gone for a complete install and kile. For the moment this works fine. Ideally I would like to have more control over which packages are on my system and whether they are up to date or not, but I think I will leave that for a future date.

[meho_r]

No. If you want to be able to manage your own updates, install the "vanilla" TeX Live and use tlmgr (first removing Ubuntu's packaged TeX Live, of course).

Actually, there's no need to remove Ubuntu's packaged TeX Live (as frabjous mentioned, if he does that, all LaTeX editors will be removed too). I'd recommend a third option: a local install. First install some LaTeX editors from Ubuntu repos. This will install all necessary TeXLive packages (i.e. dependencies). Then install TeXLive somewhere inside your home folder and add the path to binaries in your ~/.bashrc file (you may have to open the Terminal and run the command: source ~/.bashrc afterwards). I've written a quick guide regarding this in Mandriva forum so you may check it out. This approach is especially useful if you have your home folder located in a separate partition and, in case you need to reinstall your system, you'll keep your TeXLive system intact, with all updates previously done.

[freethebee]

You can get around dependencies using the equivs package as described here,
http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/ ... 08-equivs/

I used this approach to install tl2009 in karmic and now use it in lucid.

[frabjous]

There is no need for two installations. If you want to install a newer version of some particular package, or packages not on CTAN, just create a local tex tree. ~/texmf following the TDS TeX directory structure, put any newer versions of packages in there, and run sudo texhash afterwards. This works, even with the Ubuntu packages.

You can get around dependencies using the equivs package as described here,
http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/ ... 08-equivs/

I used this approach to install tl2009 in karmic and now use it in lucid.

I'm afraid that information is out of date, and there are additional packages included in the Lucid distribution of texlive not on the lists there, which you'd also have to add to the "dummy package" in order to satisfy all dependencies. I'm afraid I don't have the list. But in any case, those instructions were not sufficient for me to satisfy all the texlive dependencies in Lucid. I learned this "the hard way", so to speak, when I had a vanilla full installation of TeXlive, and had used those instructions to create a dummy package, but installing either an editor or a converter (can't remember which now) forced the uninstallation of the dummy package and I had to install the Ubuntu texlive packages anyway. (It might be enough for Kile; not sure, but not for every package that has texlive as a dependency.)

Probably you can use that method, but you'll need to figure out what the remaining dependencies are.

[freethebee]

You cannot use the instruction literally that's true. The main problem for me at the time was installing Kile, although I have texmaker and texworks installed as well. I checked the missing dependencies in synaptic and solved those, related to TeX, with dummy packages as explained in the link. It was a bit more work then just following instructions, but it worked. At the time the info was already outdated, but still useful