[XeTeX] Installation of Texlive on Ubuntu 10.04

[Dominik Wujastyk]

The short answer, Fran, is that nothing has changed.

If you wish to use Ubuntu's built-in Synaptic Package Manager, then you can
only have TeXlive 2009 at the moment.  The Debian/Ubuntu packagers for
TeXlive are probably working hard to get TeXlive 2010 into the repositories,
but there's always quite a time-lag between the release of a new TeXlive
distribution and its appearance in the Synaptic catalogue, and the process
is not transparent so one has little clue about when the Synaptic texlive
will be updated.

Advantages of the Synaptic version:

   - totally easy to install: click and have a coffee.
   - tools like Kile that have TeXlive dependencies will be available to you
   when installed via Synaptic.

Disadvantages of the Synaptic version:

   - The individual packages in the distribution never get updated.  So
   basically, you have one version of everything for a year.  Good for
   stability.  A bit annoying for the XeTeX community, where things are still
   evolving fast.

If you get TeXlive directly from http://tug.org, you'll get the TeXlive 2010
distribution that was released just recently.

Advantages of the self-installed TeXlive 2010:

   - The installation routine via the internet is also very
   straightforward.  Follow the
instructions<http://tug.org/texlive/acquire.html>carefully and all
will be well.  Also time for a coffee.
   - You get the latest versions of everything.
   - You get tlmgr <http://tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html>, a utility that
   checks the TeXlive files on your disk against the latest versions in the
   CTAN repository and updates any files that need updating.  It automatically
   rebuilds kpathsea's file indexes, font maps, formats, whatever needs doing
   to make sure everything "just works".  It's very smooth, and essentially
   does the job that the very nice MikTeX updater does under Windows.

Disadvantage of the self-installed TeXlive 2010:

   - You're not using Synaptic, so you have to do your version updating
   separately for TeX files.
   - You're not using Synaptic, so using Synaptic to install programs like
   Kile that have texlive dependencies will make Synaptic try to install
   TeXlive (2009) all over again, because it doesn't know you already have your
   self-installed TeXlive.   You can work around this by installing Kile
   directly yourself, but this means compiling the source
code<http://kile.sourceforge.net/download.php>.
   Or you can finesse the Synaptic craving for TeXlive 2009 by means of the
   equivs package.  See
here<http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/kile-texlive-2008-equivs/>for
the general idea, but search further on the net for more information.

Declaration of interest: after a year using the Synaptic TeXlive 2009, I've
just uninstalled it and gone over to the TeXlive 2010 release,
self-installed from the net.  My experience has been very good indeed, and
I'm glad I made the change.  I don't use Kile, partly because of the above
bother, and partly because it also requires a huge volume of KDE-support
files (I use Gnome).  It's a pity: Kile's a nice LaTeX editor.

Dominik


On 22 September 2010 00:10, Juan Francisco Fraile Vicente <
juanfranciscofv at gmail.com> wrote:

> As I have installed ubuntu 10.04 on my computer, I would like to have your
> advice about what is the best way of installing TeXlive at the moment.
>
> What is working better at the moment? Texlive 2010 or 2009?
> Is it better to do a full install from the iso file or install everything
> from the repositories of Canonical?
>
> When I was in Karmic Koala I installed the full Texlive, not from the
> repositories. Everything was ok, I used the TeXworks editor of Jonathan, but
> I tried to install Kile (from source) to give it a try and it was impossible
> for me. I don't know if the situation is different now, so I would like to
> know your opinions about this question, what is the best (I mean, less
> problematic in the future) installation in this distribution.
>
> Thanks for your opinions and help in advance.
>
> Fran
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20100922/64e62f4c/attachment-0001.html>