Hi there, this is my first post in this forum. I have installed ubuntu (kubuntu) linux on my MacBook Air, and have been looking at vim. I am keen to use vim to create and edit files for Latex. I downloaded and installed (as far as I can discern - the apt-get information showed it had been 'done'. I then tried to use \ ll to operate on a basic latex file, but nothing seemed to happen. I noticed that no extra files appetilared in my home folder as should happen. Then I realised I needed to download Latex itself, so did so using apt-get. It took ages to download (even though I took the option of the slimmer package rather than the full one) and to install. All done. Except that I am still not getting anything happening in my vim terminal when \ll is pressed. Doing 'locate latex' turns up all the files in /usr/share/. Is this the problem, and/or how would I fix this? I am still not fully understanding about where packages get downloaded and installed by default, and why it matters.

I also downloaded the source folders and unzipped them to my home folder (as instructions on the vim-latex site/page, so I have those files there but not doing anything as far as I am aware.

Any help greatly appreciated. Will.

Hi Will,

welcome to LQ, and welcome to Linux I neither use Ubuntu nor Vim, but I can give you some general hints.

When you install a software package in Linux, the contents get distributed across the file system: executable files go in /bin or (mostly) /usr/bin, shared stuff such as media go in /usr/share, config files go in /etc, and so on. Normally you shouldn't have to worry about this, because programs find their stuff automatically -- that's why the mentioned default locations are used.

When you download a program as source code from the Internet, you have to compile it before you can use it! However, obtaining and compiling source code is not the normal way of installing software in Ubuntu. I bet that Ubuntu offers a vim-latex package (maybe the name is slightly different). Install that using the distro's package manager and you should be fine!