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I have used LaTex for 30 years and I have used texconfig to configure it. But now I have a new computer with Ubuntu 16.04 and textconfig returns "command not found" (even as sudo). I searched for the texconfig executable and I cannot find it either. Seems to be absent. Any idea of how to install it? I have texlive installed, already the newest version (2015.20160320-1ubuntu0.1).

Paulo
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    Welcome to TeX.SX! What do you want to achieve with texconfig? – TeXnician Jan 06 '18 at 20:13
  • Most often I use it to change the paper size, or rehash LaTeX from there (I know I can use texhash for that too). – Paulo Jan 06 '18 at 20:16
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    You could use tlmgr, but it seems that you have installed the repo version of texlive. That might be troublesome. – TeXnician Jan 06 '18 at 20:21
  • As TeXnician noted: The version of TeXLive that comes in Ubuntu 16.04 is already far out of date. Try this: Completely uninstall texlive. Go to the TUG web site and get the texlive2017 installer. Use it. A "portable" installation to your home directory is recommended, but not mandatory. Then, do not install any tex programs (such as TeXWorks) from your Ubuntu software repository. It is possible to install directly from downloaded *.deb files. Search for instructions as to what you need to do. –  Jan 06 '18 at 20:43
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    @RobtAll 'A portable installation to your home directory is recommended'. Really? Recommended by whom? There is a standard question about installing vanilla TeX Live, which also explains how to avoid the various complexities. If you just uninstall the repo version and install from upstream, you'll end up reinstalling the repo version, too - and that definitely is not recommended. – cfr Jan 06 '18 at 21:17
  • See https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/how-to-install-vanilla-texlive-on-debian-or-ubuntu?s=6|38.0762 for details concerning the installation of TeX Live from upstream on a Debian-derivative. (Instructions are straightforward to adapt for other distros, too, but you won't need to do that.) If you want to go that route. Otherwise, you need to figure out which of your distro's packages, if any, provides texconfig. – cfr Jan 06 '18 at 21:20
  • @cfr Recommended by me! I have TeXlive 2017 installed on my Ubuntu. Currently I have Ubuntu 17.10, but I upgraded it from 16.04 with texlive2017 in-place in my home directory. Works like a charm. When 2018 comes out, I can install it side-by-side. Of course, I have to set environment so that it points to where the correct files are located. This is well-documented. However, there is a trick: If the user attempts to install the distro package for TeX GUIs, then the distro package manager will attempt to install distro texlive. –  Jan 06 '18 at 23:08
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    @RobtAll There's no particular advantage to putting it in your home and some disadvantages. For example, tlmgr cannot touch my home when I install or update TeX Live, any more than it can touch the (less valuable) system directories. To avoid the installation of distro TeX Live, you need to install a suitable dummy package which tells your package manager (apt in your case, I guess) that the relevant dependencies are already satisfied. I would recommend installing under /usr/local as an unprivileged, dedicated user. Your original claim 'is recommended' made it sound like official advice. – cfr Jan 06 '18 at 23:16
  • I admit that "is recommended" was a bit thick. But one reason I do it portable (more important on Windows than Linux) is that I can keep a zip archive of a known-good installation. –  Jan 07 '18 at 00:46
  • Thank you all. Reading all your comments I am inclined to install Tex Live from TUG to /usr/local as sudo. Sound reasonable? – Paulo Jan 07 '18 at 14:09
  • I found this answer to what motivated my original question: how to change the paper size in LaTeX. It doesn't solve the texconfig problem, but for those whose only issue is the paper geometry, this works: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/39648/152002 – Paulo Jan 07 '18 at 16:46

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If you want to set the default paper size in Debian (I suppose that the same works for Ubuntu as well), you should configure the libpaper1 package:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure libpaper1

and then choose the preferred paper size in the appeared dialog. This will set paper size for the supplied TeXLive distribution.

To rehash the texmf tree, just run

sudo mktexlsr

(though it's rarely necessary to do that by hands if you don't install custom packages system-wide).

Sergei Golovan
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