How to install “vanilla” TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?

Question

Debian and Ubuntu have very good texlive packaging. But I'd like to use tlmgr to have a more fine-grained control about upgrades and which packages I want to be installed. So how do I install "vanilla" TeXLive on Debian/Ubuntu? Also how do I make dpkg aware that I have TeXLive installed?

BTW: Debian & Ubuntu have TeXLive 2012 now ;-)

Answer 1

Use the net installer script from this page on the official tug.org website to install “vanilla” TeXlive.

Tricking Ubuntu into satisfying the package dependencies is more involved and requires using the equivs package. There are basic guidelines for doing so in this post on TeXblog (an unofficial blog). (This page is a bit old and was aimed at older versions of Ubuntu.) The package list there is a bit old, but the same overall procedure should still work. I’m afraid I don’t have a list offhand of what the dummy package should contain; maybe someone else will. (You can always just create new dummy packages as need be if you try to install something it tells you you have unsatisfied texlive dependencies.)

Answer 2

These instructions are for Ubuntu 12.10 and TeX Live 2012, they will probably work on most Ubuntu/Debian distributions.

Installation

Installing "vanilla" TeX Live is not as hard as you think. Things you will need:

• An internet connection.
• A couple (3+) of GiB's of free space.
• Root (sudo) powers.

Also: the instructions are meant for the terminal. If you're uncomfortable with that you can probably still install the texlive-full package from the Software center.

TeX Live Installer

First the official installer needs to be downloaded with the following commands:

wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
tar -xzf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
cd install-tl-20130125

Note that the install-tl-20130125 folder may be named differently. You can probably type install-tl and then press tab to autocomplete the folder name.

Now the installation can begin, run:

sudo ./install-tl

This will start the installer. You can change all kind of options here, most of the time the default options are correct. Press i to start installation. Depending on your internet connection this may take a long time.

If, for some reason, the installation is interrupted it can probably be resumed by running the installer again. This will prompt you to continue the installation. If you want to start the installation from the beginning it's probably wise to remove the installed elements:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/texlive/2012

Finalising the installation

If the installation completes successfully you will want to make sure your operating system can find it. This can be done by creating a symbolic link:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/texlive/2012/bin/* /opt/texbin

(Note: there should only be one subdirectory in /usr/local/texlive/2012/bin.)

Now you'll have to add /opt/texbin to your $PATH variable. This can be done by editing /etc/environment:

gksudo gedit /etc/environment

You'll see something like:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

You can change this to:

PATH="/opt/texbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

Now you'll need to logout and login again for the changes to take effect. Now start Terminal again and run:

which tex

This should show the following:

/opt/texbin/tex

Fake packages

Now TeX Live works, but it's also necessary to make Ubuntu think you've installed TeX Live. This can be done with the equivs package:

sudo apt-get install equivs --no-install-recommends
mkdir /tmp/tl-equivs && cd /tmp/tl-equivs
equivs-control texlive-local

First you'll have to edit texlive-local. A good example can be found here. Change the years to '2012' and save.

gedit texlive-local

Now you can build the package and install it:

equivs-build texlive-local
sudo dpkg -i texlive-local_2012-1_all.deb

After this installing texworks through the package maintainer won't install TeX Live again.

Fonts

If you want to install all OpenType and TrueType fonts so you can use them in other programs as well, you'll have to add the TeX Live fonts to the system configuration:

sudo cp $(kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFSYSVAR)/fonts/conf/texlive-fontconfig.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/09-texlive.conf
gksudo gedit /etc/fonts/conf.d/09-texlive.conf

Remove the line containing type1 and save. Now run:

sudo fc-cache -fsv

Updating

You can now update TeX Live though the TeX Live Manager by running:

sudo /opt/texbin/tlmgr --gui

It might complain about missing 'Tk', this can be solved by installing perl-tk:

sudo apt-get install perl-tk --no-install-recommends

Launcher

You can also create a launcher for Unity:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
gedit ~/.local/share/applications/tlmgr.desktop

Paste the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=TeX Live Manager
Exec=gksudo "/opt/texbin/tlmgr -gui"
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=system-software-update

Once again you'll need to logout and login again for the changes to take effect.

Upgrading to the next TeX Live

To upgrade you need to download and run the installer again. Afterwards you need to replace the symbolic link:

sudo rm /opt/texbin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/* /opt/texbin

It might also be a good idea to run the font section again. You can remove the old distribution by running:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/texlive/2010

Uninstalling TeX Live

To remove TeX Live completely you need to undo everything you've done:

• Remove the /opt/texbin symbolic link.
• Remove /opt/texbin from the system path.
• Remove /etc/fonts/conf.d/09-texlive.conf and update font cache.
• Remove /usr/local/texlive.
• Remove the package created with equivs.

References and sources

• TeX Live Debian guide
• TeX Live Quick install
• Enrico Gregorio's article for TUGboat

Answer 3

Some comments:

1. According to the Ubuntu package listing, the texlive package is a dummy package whose only purpose is to install a decent selection of dependencies. So it is possible to install this texlive package without installing any of its dependencies. This requires using dpkg instead of aptitude (as far as I can see, and I don't know if it's possible through the synaptic package manager): passing the --ignore-depends=texlive option to dpkg will cause it to forego the dependency check. Then anything that depends on texlive will afterwards install fine (I believe), though if something depends on, say, texlive-bin then it will complain.

2. Whilst checking the options for aptitude and dpkg for the above, I came across the following snippet from aptitude: the command

   aptitude install texlive&m
   

   will mark texlive as having been manually installed. (Note that the & will probably need some sort of shell escaping to avoid it being interpreted by the shell.) I believe this basically says to the system "I've installed this myself, so you can stop bothering with it.".

3. Possibly the easiest solution (and the one I use myself) is to simply ignore the system one and install your own version as well. If you do this right, you get the best of both worlds because one possible problem with replacing the system version with your own version is that the upgade may break some dependencies from other packages. It's less likely with something like TeX, but you can imagine that lots might go wrong if you upgrade one of the core system libraries without upgrading all the programs that use it. This is what the /usr/local directory is for. Put your installation of TeXLive in /usr/local/texlive or somewhere using the standard installation (as mentioned by frabjous, for example). By ensuring that /usr/local appears before /usr/bin in your path, and that $TEXMFCNF points to the right place, you can effectively ignore the system installation whilst being able to fall back on it if necessary.

Answer 4

A paper about installing TeX Live 2011 on Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux distributions can be found on

ArsTeXnica, vol. 10 (in Italian)
TUGboat, vol. 32-1 (issue 100) (in English)
Die TeXnische Komödie, issue 3/2011 (in German)

Thanks to Karl Berry and Barbara Beeton for the revision of the TUGboat version, and to Heiko Oberdiek and Herbert Voß for the German translation.

The papers are, up to now, available only to members of GuIT, TUG, and Dante, respectively, but will be public in due time.

Note: the Italian and English versions are about TeX Live 2010, but it's sufficient to change 2010 into 2011 in all the steps.

Answer 5

I have successfully installed TeXLive on Ubuntu 11.10 on a 64bit machine.

I have condensed the steps linked to in frabjou's answer, which, while the instructions are clear, may leave many *buntu users wondering "how do I change the PATH variable?"

wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
tar -xvf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
cd install-tl*
sudo ./install-tl

• at prompt, enter "i" to install

• change PATH, I did so by editing ~/.bashrc:

  • 64 bit

    # PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH
    cat "export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
    

  • 32 bit:

    cat "export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/i386-linux:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
    

caveat see the tug instructions for more details; e.g. if TeXLive 2011 has been previously installed, it needs to be removed