Welcome to TeX Live

The TeX Live software distribution offers a complete TeX system for a variety of Unix, Macintosh, Windows and other platforms. It encompasses programs for editing, typesetting, previewing and printing of TeX documents in many different languages, and a large collection of TeX macros and font libraries.

The distribution also includes extensive general documentation about TeX, as well as the documentation accompanying the included software packages.

For licensing information, please see the top-level LICENSE.TL and LICENSE.CTAN text files.

Where to start

We strongly recommend that you read the TeX Live Guide before undertaking the installation. It includes step-by-step instructions, a description of the top-level directories, and more.

English versions of the Guide are in the texmf-doc/doc/english/ hierarchy, in both html and pdf formats. Translations to other languages are also available under texmf-doc/doc/*.

For a list of the most important changes in this year's release, see the "Release history" section at the end of the documentation.

Installation

Space limitations of CD-ROM format have forced us to divide TeX Live into several distributions. You can tell which one you're in by looking for a 00type.TL file in this top-level directory.

live

A complete system on DVD; it is too large for CD. You can run programs directly from the mounted DVD; see the documentation for details. Or you can install to disk by executing the script install-tl.sh in the texlive directory under Unix, including MacOSX (GNU/Linux users can also try setuptl/tlpmgui-i386-linux). A Windows installer named tlpmgui.exe is also available, in the setuptl directory.

The live DVD also contains other distributions: proTeXt (see below); MacTeX, for MacOSX; and a snapshot of CTAN. Each of these are completely independent from TeX Live, with different licensing conditions.

inst(allable)

A complete system on CD, for installing on Unix (including MacOSX) or Windows; in order to make it fit, we had to compress everything we could. Therefore, it is not possible to run TeX directly from the installable CD; you have to install it to disk (hence its name). Do this by running ./install-tl.sh on Unix or MacOSX, or setuptl/tlpmgui-i386-linux (GNU/Linux GUI install), or setuptl/tlpmgui.exe on Windows.

protext

The proTeXt distribution for Windows is an enhancement of MiKTeX: it adds a few extra tools, and simplifies installation considerably. It is completely independent of TeX Live, and has its own installation instructions. It can be run live or installed to disk. proTeXt is provided on the live DVD, and (for some user groups) its own CD.

Naturally, each user group chooses what to distribute, at its own discretion. (TUG is sending all three discs above to its members.)

CD format details: For Unix and Mac, the CD's use the Rock Ridge extensions to the standard ISO-9660 format. For Windows, Microsoft Joliet extensions are used. In any case, you should see the full names after mounting. If you see truncated names, you cannot run programs directly. If you have plenty of bandwidth and know how to burn discs, the ISO images are available online. The contents are also available for browsing.

Documentation

Most of the documentation can be viewed online, before the TeX system is installed. To read it most conveniently, you will need to have a browser (such as Mozilla, the free version of Netscape) for HTML documents, and a PDF reader (such as gv or xpdf, both free alternatives to Acrobat) for PDF documents.

• TeX Live documentation (html).
• Links to all included PDF and HTML documentation.
• TeX FAQ's in the distribution: Czech/Slovak, English (pdf), French, German,

Finally, some related web pages, for your reference. These are not included in TeX Live:

• http://tug.org/begin.html - if you are new to TeX and/or want introductory material.
• http://tug.org/interest.html - general list of TeX web resources, including documentation, systems, packages, fonts, and more.
• http://tug.org/ctan.html - one entry point into the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN), which is an online repository of all things TeX.
• http://tug.org/usergroups.html - list of TeX user groups around the world, with contact information. We strongly encourage you to join the user group of your choice, to support TeX Live and other TeX activities.

Happy TeXing!