Native Installation

Note

Operating system dependent installation guide.

The LaTeX installation method depends on the operating system (GNU/Linux, macOS, or Windows). For GNU/Linux, the method also varies from one Linux distribution to another. The description in this tutorial applies to Debian/Ubuntu Linux systems. If you use another GNU/Linux distribution, adapt the description accordingly.

Follow the detailed description depending on your host OS.

Note

Remove all LaTeX packages on your system first, for a clean installation of the latest TeX Live installation. For a clean removal of the LaTeX packages please see here for some hints.

There are multiple ways of getting a TeX distribution. However, we recommend the usage of TeX Live on GNU/Linux. This guide describes how to install it on your system.

Attention

Do not install TeX Live from your operating system’s package manager. It is possible that it will not install the latest version, which is needed to get the latest BFH LaTeX packages.

Basic Packages

  1. Install required packages

    # apt install -y unzip wget perl

Installation of TeX Live

  1. Change into a temporary folder

    $ mkdir /tmp/texlive && cd /tmp/texlive

  2. Download the TeX Live installer for Linux

    $ wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl.zip

  3. Extract the install-tl.zip archive

    $ unzip install-tl.zip -d install-tl

  4. Change to the extracted directory

    $ cd install-tl/install-tl-$(date +%Y%m%d)

  5. Start the installation

    # perl install-tl
======================> TeX Live installation procedure <=====================

======>   Letters/digits in <angle brackets> indicate   <=======
======>   menu items for actions or customizations      <=======
= help>   https://tug.org/texlive/doc/install-tl.html   <=======

 Detected platform: GNU/Linux on x86_64

 <B> set binary platforms: 1 out of 16

 <S> set installation scheme: scheme-full

 <C> set installation collections:
     40 collections out of 41, disk space required: 7231 MB

 <D> set directories:
   TEXDIR (the main TeX directory):
     /usr/local/texlive/2021
   TEXMFLOCAL (directory for site-wide local files):
     /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
   TEXMFSYSVAR (directory for variable and automatically generated data):
     /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-var
   TEXMFSYSCONFIG (directory for local config):
     /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-config
   TEXMFVAR (personal directory for variable and automatically generated data):
     ~/.texlive2021/texmf-var
   TEXMFCONFIG (personal directory for local config):
     ~/.texlive2021/texmf-config
   TEXMFHOME (directory for user-specific files):
     ~/texmf

 <O> options:
   [ ] use letter size instead of A4 by default
   [X] allow execution of restricted list of programs via \write18
   [X] create all format files
   [X] install macro/font doc tree
   [X] install macro/font source tree
   [ ] create symlinks to standard directories

 <V> set up for portable installation

Actions:
 <I> start installation to hard disk
 <P> save installation profile to 'texlive.profile' and exit
 <Q> quit

Enter command:

  6. Press S to change the scheme

    ===============================================================================
Select scheme:

 a [X] full scheme (everything)
 b [ ] medium scheme (small + more packages and languages)
 c [ ] small scheme (basic + xetex, metapost, a few languages)
 d [ ] basic scheme (plain and latex)
 e [ ] minimal scheme (plain only)
 f [ ] ConTeXt scheme
 g [ ] GUST TeX Live scheme
 h [ ] infrastructure-only scheme (no TeX at all)
 i [ ] teTeX scheme (more than medium, but nowhere near full)
 j [ ] custom selection of collections

Actions: (disk space required: 7231 MB)
 <R> return to main menu
 <Q> quit

Enter letter to select scheme:

  7. Select “small scheme” (c)

  8. Return to main menu (R)

  9. Install TeX Live (I)

  10. After the installation completed, add tlmgr and the binaries it installed to your system path

    The command below will add symlinks in /usr/local/bin to the texlive binary dir on your system.

    # /usr/local/texlive/$(date +%Y)/bin/x86_64-linux/tlmgr path add

    Note

    Each time when running tlmgr install, ensure to also run tlmgr path add to update the symlinks. Else you might see command not found for some tools you install with tlmgr.

Installation of additional tools

  1. Install additional Tools/Packages

    Note

    We will only work through the required nunito font. Repeat the steps for biber and latexmk. The procedure is the same for all three packages.

    # tlmgr install nunito

  2. Install Inkscape (recommended)

    Continue on Tools and Editors

  3. Install make (optional)

    To work with Makefiles

    # apt install -y make