Try downloading install-tl-unx.tar.gz . Create a folder called texlive2013 inside your home directory and install TeX Live there. You could also install it on a portable
hard drive or a large capacity memory stick, but in the latter case compiling may be painfully slow.
This worked on a linux machine on which I do not have admin privileges (it was necessary because it had a prehistoric TeX installation). I think it will work on a Mac as well. You will probably need to manually edit your login script so that the path environment variable makes latex, pdflatex etc. available from the terminal.
For an editor, try running emacs from the terminal; it may be installed already. If it doesn't work, you could try emacs -nw (which runs emacs in the terminal window itself). Failing that, there is always vi, or just edit your LaTeX files using TextEdit, or another text editor that is already installed.
EDIT
On second thoughts, you can probably install an editor of your choice in your home directory or on a portable storage device. Most OS X applications don't care where they are installed.
If you are happy with experimenting a bit, I suggest to proceed as follows. Disclaimer: I don't have a dual boot machine, I kicked Windows off my Laptop years ago.
Install texlive under windows and test it. Then boot into Linux and start the installation of texlive. Cancel the installation process after some minutes. Now, you have a TDS compliant structure, but the content is missing. EDIT: Delete all files and folders inside /texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex and /texlive/2014/texmf-dist/doc (not in your Windows folder, I'm speaking only of the Linux side!).
Then make two links:
- link from .../texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex to C:/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex
- link from .../texlive/2014/texmf-dist/doc to C:/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/doc
I don't know whether a hard link or a symbolic link, but as Linux has this link feature, I'd check this possibility. Maybe here are some geeks who know exactly how to set a link from a Linux folder to a NTFS folder somewhere else.
Why only those two links? Because the LaTeX packages and the documents make the lions share of the texlive.
OK. Then restart the installation under Linux. I hope that tlmgr will accept the link to your windows installation and then try to install every single package and documentation, but notices they are already there.
Recently I transferred all doc and latex files to another computer and that part (start installation, abort, transfer, restart) worked. But I have no experience with linking into a windows installation.
Of course, you have to install the linux packages for writing into ntfs. And maybe you ruin your texlive installation on windows, if the installer tries something unexpected. But if you make a backup of it, why not giving it a whirl.
Best Answer
The only advantage of installing TL over WSL is the speed at compile times, I did the test installing using WSL 1.0 (version 2.0 is not yet available). If you're looking to improve the compile times a bit, it's better to install the 64-bit TL version.
Back to your question, the answer is YES, to use TL from windows under WSL, you only have to call the executables with their extension
.exe. for example:And if you have decided to install TL under WSL, you only have to add
wslbefore the executable. for example:(be careful if you use
xelatex, you will have to installfcand some more libraries).