TeX Live

TeX Live is an easy way to get up and running with the TeX document production system. It provides a comprehensive TeX system with binaries for most flavors of Unix, including GNU/Linux, and also Windows. It includes all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software, including support for many languages around the world.

• How to acquire TeX Live: download, on DVD, other methods.
• Quick install for Unix; installation and release notes for Windows; for MacOSX, see the MacTeX distribution.
• Documentation and mailing lists.
• Known issues and highlights of changes in the current release (details for LuaTeX, XeTeX, MetaPost).

• Portable (USB and DVD) usage of TeX Live.
• Installing/updating packages after installation and full upgrade from previous years.

• TeX Live licensing, and integration with operating system distributions.
• Development source repository, and building the sources.
• How you can help.

• Current release: TeX Live 2013 is available over the Internet and on DVD. It was released on 18 June 2013, and ongoing updates are available.

Some starting points for actually using TeX are in this introduction to the TeX world.

Plan for TeX Live 2014:
16mar: sources committed, builds begin.
17apr: tlnet (and TL'13) frozen, tlpretest starts, CTAN updates continue there.
15may: complete code freeze for final build.
23may: final updates from CTAN, final doc tweaks.
24may: deliver TL image for TeX Collection packaging/testing.
1jun: deliver TeX Collection DVD to manufacturing.
1jul: public release (also of MacTeX).
August?: delivery of DVDs to members.

TeX Live has been developed since 1996 by collaboration between the TeX user groups. TeX Live was originally perpetrated by Sebastian Rahtz. Present miscreants are Akira Kakuto, Karl Berry, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard, Norbert Preining, Peter Breitenlohner, Reinhard Kotucha, Siep Kroonenberg, Staszek Wawrykiewicz, Tomasz Trzeciak, and a cast of thousands.