[tex-live] tikz in zenwalk

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Dec 19 14:56:10 CET 2010


On 18 December 2010 Santo D'Agostino wrote:

 > Hello,
 > 
 > I am trying to get my latex up and running in a newly installed  
 > zenwalk linux box. However, apparently tikz cannot be installed  
 > automatically by the zenwalk package manager (netpkg), and so I have  
 > to do it by hand. However, I am relatively new to linux, and am having  
 > difficulty doing this.
 > 
 > I am running tetex on zenwalk. Should I persevere, or should I switch  
 > to texlive, or should I just ditch the whole operating system and  
 > start again with something like ubuntu, which I hear is a little  
 > easier to use for linux newbies?

I don't know whether Ubuntu is easier to use.  Different Linux distros
come with different installers and different package management
systems, almost every distribution allows you to select the graphical
user interface of your choice.  Once you have the system installed,
you are running the same programs as in any other distribution.

There are a few important things to consider first: If a particular
distro doesn't provide all the software you need, you have to download
and compile it yourself.  This is not a big problem generally, but it
can be a lot of extra work if you have to maintain too many packages
yourself.  Thus, a distro which provides more packages itself is
preferable.

Another thing worth considering is whether you prefer a distro which
supports rolling releases, such as Gentoo or Arch Linux.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_release

It seems that the TeX packages in Arch Linux are amazingly up-to-date.

I'm wondering why Zenwalk still provides teTeX at all, though they
claim to provide the "latest stable software".  I suppose that it's
due to lack of human resources, not due to stability.  teTeX was a
rather small subset of what is provided by TeX Live, and it's
discontinued for more than four years by now.

If you decide to stick with Zenwalk, I recommend to remove teTeX
(using the package manager) in order to avoid the problems Zdenek
mentioned.  Then you can safely install TeX Live using the network
installer.

It's certainly worthwhile to check which Linux distribution fits your
requirements best.  But I would do this *before* installing additional
software.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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