Tex Live Installation

[Karl Berry]

Hi Jeremias - thanks for your comments. Siep's response of using a
distro TeX is a good one. Here are my thoughts.

No one document can suffice for all needs. If you can tell me what went
wrong for you, I can try to improve the documentation, somewhere,
somehow.

Meanwhile, this web page is my attempt at distilling the installation process:
https://tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html

But even there, I try to at least acknowledge Windows, Mac, other
issues, so it's longer than it needs to be for any particular case.

The absolute minimum for a full GNU/Linux installation in the standard
directories and with A4 paper would be:

cd /tmp # or whatever temp working dir you like
wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
tar xf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
cd install-tl-* # the directory will be named with the date
perl install-tl
.. messages omitted, just a single command is needed: ...
I
.. long installation, lots of downloads, etc. ...

Assuming the install succeeds (there will be a happy welcome message), add
  /usr/local/texlive/2020/bin/x86_64-linux
to your PATH in whatever startup file, log out and log back in,
and enjoy TeX.

For letter size paper by default, after installation, run:
tlmgr paper letter

Hope this helps somehow,
Karl