The reason why your link isn't found is that additions to the main texmf tree require the ls-R databases to be updated using mktexlsr
. However, the usual place for local additions on a Linux system is ~/texmf
. If you put your symbolic link in ~/texmf/tex/latex
, then you won't need do anything else for it to be found.
You should never place files in any of the .../texlive/<year>
directories, since they are for the actual distribution files and can be overwritten by updates.
If you truly need system-wide local additions (for multiple users) you can put them in /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
. If you put things here, you must run sudo mktexlsr
to rebuild the ls-R databases.
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
I suggest you install TeXLive from TUG (http://tug.org/texlive/). It does not interfere with system package manager. And more or less, you can get the same behavior across all platforms.
Just remember to put the
PATH
to texlive binary before everything else. It is possible that there might be some conflicts. For example, an executable within TeXLive has the same name as something total unrelated, instead by the package manager. However, this kind of case is rare can be dealt with easily.I usually use
tlmgr path add
to link TeXLive binaries into/usr/local/bin
etc., and remove any problematic links manually, which is very rare and I haven't need to do this for years.