[Tex/LaTex] Versions of TeXLive under Ubuntu

installingtexliveUbuntu

Since installing Ubuntu, I noticed that it has an old version of TeXLive, namely, TeXLive 2009. To get the latest version, I downloaded and installed TeXLive 2011 from CTAN. As this installs itself in a separate directory, I noticed that I now have two versions of TeXLive installed on my system.

My first question is, can I safely remove the old version using the Synaptic Package Manager, for example, without affecting the newer version, or do I need to uninstall both, and reinstall TeXLive 2011 by itself?

My second question is, does it really matter since I have done the proper thing, and set PATH to include the new version of TeXLive? Note that all works fine if I, for example, run pdflatex at the system prompt (that is, it uses the latest version).

My third question is, which version is KILE using? Is it using the first one it finds in the PATH, or is it still pointing to the old version?

Any help/advice would be appreciated.

Best Answer

I run TeX Live 2011 but also have most, if not all, the synaptic-managed packages from Ubuntu 11.04 on the systems. By having the paths set up correctly most software packages work well, especially those run from the command line that are part of TeX Live (I went through this in more detail in a response to a related question).

However, if you read through that answer you will notice that some software tools do not follow the set path; they have internal settings that could reference, in both our cases, the wrong versions of other tools and packages.

The version of TeXworks I run does this but has a simple configuration setting to modify.

I rarely use Kile but if you look at the menu for the synaptic-installed Kile at Settings -> Configure Kile -> Kile -> Help that the default path to the LaTeX help system is set to /usr/share/doc/texlive-doc. This is wrong on my system and may be on yours but is simply changed. On running a simple pdflatex build the output window shows This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (TeX Live 2009/Debian) which is not the version I would want it to run by default for live work. I do not know of a single configuration setting that can change this. A Kile support discussion suggested several workrounds that you may want to consider including running it from the console, as Peter commented above.

In the discussion below Bill comments that "the latest release of KILE (Version 2.1) contains the fix" and provides a link to a pre-general release PPA.

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