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What i want

install LaTeX for Linux on Mint 14 OS

What i did

download LaTex from http://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire-netinstall.html

i installed this package: install-tl.zip

successfully installed it via terminal

Problem

Where is LaTeX on my laptop? i can't find it.

Community
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Ric
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    Welcome to TeX.sx! Your post was migrated here from [so]. Please register on this site, too, and make sure that both accounts are associated with each other (by using the same OpenID), otherwise you won't be able to comment on or accept answers or edit your question. – Werner May 10 '13 at 15:16
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    Have a look at Verify a latex installation: Commandline/Terminal: – texenthusiast May 10 '13 at 18:33
  • TeXlive should have asked you where to install; anyway, a log is usually kept in the same dir where the install-tl script was: it's usually called install-tl.log and informs the base directories of your installation (they must be added to your PATH later). AFAIK TeXlive usually defaults them to /usr/share/. – henrique May 10 '13 at 19:36
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    @henrique The vanilla TeX Live installer puts everything in /usr/local/texlive/<year>. Only package manager provided TeX distributions (such as for Debian or Fedora) put files in /usr/share. – egreg May 10 '13 at 21:14
  • @egreg is absolutely right. The OP should check this answer – henrique May 10 '13 at 22:34

4 Answers4

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For some *nix systems, you could use whereis command:

whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command

whereis latex

Output example:

latex: /usr/bin/latex /usr/share/man/man1/latex.1.gz

This should work for TeX Live 2017 on Debian systems.

However, keep in mind:

The whereis utility checks the standard binary directories for the specified programs, printing out the paths of any it finds.

For example on MacOS as @egreg stated:

the whereis command only looks in the path provided by sysctl user.cs_path, which is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin. So it doesn't find latex or any binary in the TeX Live distribution, which are installed under /usr/local/texlive//bin/.

So instead, try using which:

which -a latex

Which takes one or more arguments. For each of its arguments it prints to stdout the full path of the executables that would have been executed when this argument had been entered at the shell prompt.

U-ways
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First of all, you cannot see LaTeX like other fancy applications. In other words LaTeX installation does not include GUI.

If LaTeX is installed successfully, then you can simply call it from your terminal. To check if it is really installed, type this in the terminal:

$ latex -v

This should output the version information of installed LaTeX.

If that is successful, then the simplest way to typeset is 

$ latex path/to/file-to-typeset.tex

This should generate file-to-typeset.dvi in the same directory in which .tex file exists.

Some text editors can call latex command inside (e.g. Emacs) so that you don't have to switch back and forth from the text editor to the terminal.

N. Shimode
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  • latex small2e should create small2e.dvi in any directory where the user has write access. (Or pdflatex small2e to get small2e.pdf.) – jon May 10 '13 at 21:39
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To locate binaries open the shell and type

$ whence latex
Predrag Punosevac
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    What is this command? Do you mean which latex? – jon May 11 '13 at 04:40
  • It is not "which"! The Unix command for finding binaries is "whence". The was no spelling mistake so I do not see where you read "which"? – Predrag Punosevac May 11 '13 at 12:31
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    whence is actually a shell command (ksh), so it doesn't work for example on my Unix system with bash. which does work, since it's independent of the shell. It cannot find shell commands, in contrast to whence, but this doesn't matter here. (just commenting, I did not vote here) – Stefan Kottwitz May 11 '13 at 13:41
  • @Stefan Kottwitz Point well taken! I use Korn shell so I am not familiar with bash. As a matter of fact the first thing that I do on MAC and Linux is switching the shell to Korn. – Predrag Punosevac May 11 '13 at 13:55
  • @PredragPunosevac: man 1 which – Martin Schröder May 11 '13 at 14:32
  • @PredragPunosevac -- I'm sorry: I'm not sure how I was to realize you use ksh. I've never used it, so I was unfamiliar with the command whence. It might be useful to put in your answer that one has to be using the Korn shell. (For bash, there is in addition to which, type, which may be of interest to bash users.) – jon May 12 '13 at 00:49
  • @jon I own you an apology. I have been using Korn shell and OpenBSD on which Korn shell is default for way too long. As soon as Stefan posted his comment I understood that the down vote was coming from an irritated Bash user. – Predrag Punosevac May 12 '13 at 01:23
  • @PredragPunosevac -- No worries, really! I simply thought it might be a typo. I certainly didn't downvote the answer. If anything, it just goes to show that I'm probably missing out by never leaving the familiarity of the bash world. Point in case: I only learned about type by trying to learn what whence did! – jon May 12 '13 at 04:46
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Find the installation result files in /usr/local/texlive. I highly recommend to read at the docs for post-installation steps.

Ricardo Sanchez
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