Latex on Ubuntu

This is what I did to get TeX/Latex working on Ubuntu 10.04. Note, this is not the only way... Also, this may have some redundant packages.

There is a Winefish program to edit the latex files, but you can do it using gedit or emacs if you know most of the commands or have a good example or template. A good editor would have syntax highlighting and auto spell-check.

Install some packages to get pdflatex and other tools. Note, there is no package named pdflatex.

sudo apt-get install tex-common
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base 
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra

Get some fonts to avoid the infamous missing 'ptmri7t' error.

sudo apt-get install texlive-fonts-recommended

You can create the pdf document from TeX like this

pdflatex mydoc.tex

I find it useful creating a makefile that will do this and some other tasks, such as cleaning up the log files and such.

Updated install for 11.04

sudo apt-get install texlive texlive-latex-extra

Good resources

• in general: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
• Fonts and text size: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Formatting#Font_Styles_and_size
• Figures and captions: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Floats,_Figures_and_Captions#Figures
• Tables: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables
• Latex makefiles: http://www.wlug.org.nz/LatexMakefiles