LaTeX setup for Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

If you are installing LaTeX on a Debian derivative and want to use department-specific styles and fonts, follow these steps:

• Install the standard tex packages from your distribution. You may of course choose to install only a selection, but a full installation is about 4.5GB, and a reasonable working selection will be close to 3 GB, so you might just as well go for the full installation, i.e.

  • sudo apt-get install texlive-full

• We must append to the configuration files so that they recognize the department's packages and fonts.

  • sudo bash -c 'echo TEXMFLOCAL=/usr/share/texlive/texmf-local > /etc/texmf/texmf.d/texmf-local.cnf'
    
    sudo update-texmf

• The next step is to download and install the department packages.

  • sudo curl -o /usr/local/bin/update-texmf-local http://dist.control.lth.se/public/Texlive/texmf-local/scripts/update-texmf-local
    
    sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/update-texmf-local
    
    sudo update-texmf-local

Done. You may do a quick test by copying the directory /usr/share/texlive/texmf-local/template/LTHreport (use cp -a) to a test area and then run pdflatex template. This should confirm that everything works as intended.

It is a good idea to run /usr/local/bin/update-texmf-local regularly (once a month?) to get any new and updated packages.