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I've spent two days messing about with this now!

If I install TexLive from the repositories, I'm unable to use tlmgr to update it, and Lyx can't find any of the document classes.

the "Tex Information" config option lists them all happily, and LaTex works fine, so there's obviously something broken in Lyx (and yes, I've reconfigured, texhashed and even rebooted)

SO, uninstalling TexLive and reinstalling from the TexLive installer (not the apt repos) works fine (except the default install location is /usr/local which requires root permissions despite installer instructions to not install as root. I had to manually create the install directory and chmod it to get the install to work as myself). I have a working, tested Tex install!

but now, of course, I can't install Lyx because apt doesn't know that I have a working Tex install and insists that I need the tex-common package installed with my lyx package, which will overwrite my lovely working tlmgr-able tex install with an old version that won't work with tlmgr and put me back with Lyx not being able to find document classes.

Is it always this hard? The just all feels broken to me...What am I getting wrong? How does anyone get Lyx working?

mfhholmes
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  • On Ubuntu/Debian it does seem to just work. By doing a manual install you omit items required by the package system, so that then creates other problems, as you've found. It might be easier to revert to the package system and then ask for help solving that. Your idea of checking the tex install first is a good one. I'd uninstall the manual tex installation. Purge all lyx and tex packages (not just remove), and then try to reinstall lyx. Lyx should bring in all the required packages. – Nigel Nov 19 '14 at 02:48
  • You might be interested in https://github.com/scottkosty/install-tl-ubuntu . To use it, uninstall everything you've installed then run sudo ./install-tl-ubuntu. If you want to install all of the dependencies that LyX needs so that you can compile every single LyX example and template, run instead sudo ./install-tl-ubuntu --more-tex. – scottkosty Nov 19 '14 at 02:52
  • looks interesting, that will actually solve the repo problem I guess, so at least I'll be able to install Lyx without overwriting texlive... I'll give it a go and report back :) thanks! – mfhholmes Nov 19 '14 at 02:57
  • You should see this question. Note that the script @scottkosty pointed to almost certainly will install as root which, as you say, is not recommended by upstream. These instructions explain how to create a new user to do the installation (and why you should do this rather than install as either yourself or root). Disclaimer: Those are my instructions. I wrote them because I don't know of any others. – cfr Nov 19 '14 at 03:03
  • I agree with cfr (and he is correct on his points). My script is just if you want something simple that works. – scottkosty Nov 19 '14 at 03:13
  • ran the script, which gave me a working tex install again, and tlmgr works, so that's the plus. the negative is that Lyx package still wants to install tex-common which will overwrite... any ideas? – mfhholmes Nov 19 '14 at 10:52
  • @mfhholmes dang I have not seen that when installing the lyx package. I don't know how to get around that. You could compile and install LyX yourself. It's not as hard as it sounds. I have instructions here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/180167/12212 but those might be specific to my setup. – scottkosty Nov 19 '14 at 11:09
  • Well, I tried everything to stop it installing tex-common. But then I gave up. figured one last try and then I'd give up on lyx and find something else. So I let it install tex-common package. What do you know? it works, most document classes found. I'm laughing, I should be crying ;) thanks for the help! – mfhholmes Nov 19 '14 at 12:48
  • @mfhholmes glad it worked. So what happened? It said it would install tex-common and you were worried about that causing it to install a bunch of other packages, but that did not happen? – scottkosty Nov 19 '14 at 20:21
  • the only thing I can think of is that tex-common does not overwrite a texlive installation. I'd been installing textlive-base (and texlive-full) packages previously, and they overwrote the conventional texlive install. But installing tex-common (because lyx-common required it and wouldn't accept my fake tex-local package substitute) apparently didn't install any versions of tex (which -a tex just gives the one in /opt/texbin). shrug I have no idea ;) – mfhholmes Nov 20 '14 at 06:16

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