Installing LaTeX

Installing LaTeX

What is LaTeX?

Before I begin about how to install LaTeX and setting it up, it would be best to go over what LaTeX is exactly. TeX is a typesetting system that was first created by Donald Knuth. TeX is extremely powerful in that it allows fine-grain customization but, as a result, it was also rather cumbersome to use. This is where LaTeX comes in. LaTeX is essentially an extension of TeX.

Installing LaTeX

 

Now that we know a little bit about LaTeX, let's begin the installation process. I am using a Linux system (Ubuntu specifically) and so the installation process may be different for you if you are using a computer with Mac OS X or Windows. You will have to look up how to install the following software that I will be using in my tutorials:

• LaTeX
• Texmaker

However, if you are using Ubuntu, all you need to do is simply open a terminal and enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install texlive-full

Once you have entered those commands, you should have LaTeX completely installed on your system. Now let's install texmaker, which was made specifically for creating and editing TeX documents.

So, in your terminal enter:

sudo apt-get install texmaker  

And you will now have texmaker on your computer.



In my next post, I will go over some basic things that you can do with LaTeX as well as making a "Hello World" file for LaTeX.