[Tex/LaTex] How to call TexLive in Ubuntu

texliveUbuntu

Following the instructions in this page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LaTeX , I installed TexLive, which needs some 1GB of space (I installed the texlive-full package). Yet, after installation, I don't seem to find any command that seems to represent the TexLive!! Is it the normal tex, latex, pdflatex, etc.? Well, I already had those before installing TexLive? So where was the 1GB installed? What about the packages? Where were they installed?

Best Answer

You could use kpathsea to check the locations.

Type this at the command prompt to get the main path of your TeX installation:

kpsewhich --var-value=TEXMFMAIN

kpsewhich can provide more information, just type kpsewhich --help to learn more about it.

Further you could use the which tool to locate executables:

which tex

You may also check the versions of TeX, pdfTeX, LaTeX etc.:

tex -version
latex -version

All can be done at the command prompt, i.e. within a terminal window.

Further there are of course package managing tools of your distribution for look-up which packages are installed - Synaptic, dpkg-query -l etc.

If you're still not sure: just go ahead, compile a LaTeX file. Afterwards read the first line of the .log file produced by LaTeX, within the same directory. The first line may look like:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (Web2C 2009) (format=pdflatex 2010.6.25)
12 DEC 2010 16:47

So you know if you're using a current version. The package manager which you used for installation should have taken care of all, so texlive would be used. The questions 'What' and 'Where' can be answered by the mentioned kpsewhich, using various parameters, which does path look-up and file-look-up and presents the actually 'active' file.

Related Question