[Tex/LaTex] How to use TeX Live on Fedora 17

installinglinuxtexlive

On Fedora 17 I have at least 3 ways to use TeX Live:

  1. Install it from the default repository (TeX Live 2007, very old)
  2. Add a work-in-progress developer repository – is it stable enough? In the past there was some negative feedback – but this was years ago.
  3. Manually install TeX Live

The 1st way does not work for me – because 2007 is too old.

So, what is the 'recommended' way to use TeX Live on Fedora 17 now?

Best Answer

What I do across my machines is to manually install TeXLive in a system neutral directory. Something like /opt (instead of /usr/local which is the default for the TeXLive installer) will do. In my Fedora machine I even have /opt in a separate partition so there is not even the need to reinstall TeXLive in case I reinstall Fedora. According to my experience I found that, even in linux distributions that package the latest TeXLive, it is easier to administer your installation through a central directory and you do not mess with the files of your distribution. Plus you get a working TeXLive package manager and you can update your TeXLive installation through it as you see fit.

For most Linux Standard Base distributions (such as Fedora) it will suffice to add a shell script in /etc/profile.d to add your TeXLive installation to the PATH so that you can have access of the TeXLive executables via the command line. For example in my Fedora machine I have created a /etc/profile.d/texlive2011.sh shell script with the following content.

#!/bin/bash
# 32bit or 64bit ?
texarch=`uname -m`
# TeXLive installation directory. Edit accordingly
dir=/opt/texlive/2011/bin/${texarch}-linux
# Check if $dir exists and if yes add it to the $PATH
if [ -d $dir ] ; then
   export PATH=$PATH:$dir
fi

You might need to mark it as executable (sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/texlive2011.sh). A logout/login might be required as well.

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