Quoted from https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Page_Layout#Page_size:
It will not have been immediately obvious - because it doesn't really cause any serious problems - that the default page size for all standard document classes is US letter.
I created a simple document like this:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Lorem
\end{document}
After I compile this into PDF with TeX Live, I always get A4 size output.
$ pdflatex foo.tex
$ identify -verbose foo.pdf | grep Print
Print size: 8.26389x11.6944
I can reproduce this on Ubuntu and Mac. Is the Wikibooks wrong in this case? Does the output size default depend on the Tex Live defaults?
tlmgr
, On MacTeX it's easier with TeX Live Utility.apt-get install texlive
on Ubuntu andbrew install basictex
on Mac.