Installing LaTeX

Let's start off with the installation of the LaTeX distribution–TeX Live. This distribution is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like operating systems. TeX Live is well maintained and it is being actively developed.

Note

Another very good and user-friendly LaTeX distribution for Windows is MiKTeX. It's easy to install like any other Windows application, but it's not available for other systems like Linux or Mac OS X. You can download it from http://miktex.org.

At first, we will visit the TeX Live homepage and take a survey of the installation possibilities. Feel free to explore the homepage in depth to study the information offered there.

Open the TeX Live homepage at http://tug.org/texlive.

We will cover two ways of installation. The first will be online and requires an Internet connection. The other method starts with a huge download, but may be finished offline.

Let's check out the two installation methods.