I am considering coming back to slackware once I buy some blank DVDs for version 13, but before leaving Arch Linux, I would like to know if anyone has a solid LaTeX setup. I use latex for all of my documents, and that is pretty much all I need to do on my machine besides web browsing. I'm talking about emacs + AUCTeX, vim-latex, or just straight up vim editing the tex longhand. Since this is probably the only and most important thing I do on my Linux box, I figured it would be pretty important to ask the community how you are doing with this and what solutions you have come up with before taking the plunge again (I installed slackware before, but had to go back to Arch because I didn't have time to re-learn everything. There is an unexplainable attraction pulling me back to slack, though). I've tried googling this to death, but it's really hard to find a good comparison between vim and emacs handling LaTeX files, and harder still to find some slackware users' testimony.

So I ask, what's your LaTeX system? I would really prefer not to use graphical tools, for vim and emacs have found their way into my heart and I'm deciding which editor will be my primary one. The vim and emacs GUIs also have some problems in tiling window managers in my experience, as well.

Hi,

I am not a LaTeX guru, but I use it extensively under Slackware 12.1, using both Vi (vim) and LyX as the editors (LyX is terrific if you have not used it!).

I have seen some messages about LaTeX under Slackware 13, mostly having to do with build permissions I think - but nothing that would be a barrier to use once installed. I have one Slackware 13 install running now but have not gotten to my LaTeX uses with it yet.

So my answer would be that there are no 'special' considerations to using LaTeX under Slackware - it just works!

Hi astrogeek!

I haven't looked into LyX much, mostly because the name is weird (is it really pronounced "licks"?). That is a superficial reason, though, so I'll check it out. I am a bit reluctant to use it, since it's a GUI app and I really prefer working in the terminal/console.

Besides that, is typing out all the markup by hand not so much a problem/timewaster to you? When I read stuff from emacs + AUCTeX users, they talk about it like it's the splitting of the sea. Right now, I'm using some tools from MacTeX on OS X, typing out all the markup myself. I think I used AUCTeX a long time ago, but I didn't really get into it.

If just using vim to type out all the LaTeX is the general trend around here, then by all means I'll just do that. I just didn't want to be the oddball here doing all this extra typing when everyone else has awesome solutions.

I have latex installed along with auctex and emacs. I have used it to write papers. But I am not a latex expert. So far no problems.

Slackware uses tetex. This package is deprecated because Thomas Esser no longer works on it. Most distros now use texlive which has a huge number of style packages. Eventually Slackware will have to switch to texlive.

Cool! It's good to hear emacs + auctex works fine on slackware. The main thing I was worried about was the older version of emacs not being compatible with auctex, but now that I think about it, SBo or wherever people get auctex around here would only have the version that works with the latest slackware.

Tetex does lack a whole bunch of packages, but general document creation should work fine (since so many people here and in the FreeBSD world are still stuck with it) so I guess I don't mind. Tell me, does it come with XeTeX or XeLaTeX? I really like those more than just straight pdflatex because I can install my expert fonts and use those. If not, then hopefully some of the nicer latex fonts are available in tetex (such as TeX Gyre Termes, the Palatino clone, Latin Modern, etc.).

I must confess I never heard of xetex. I use pdflatex.

"which xetex" shows nothing.

Alright then I'm pretty sure it's not in tetex. Xetex and xelatex are just like latex, but they have more features such as the ability to use fonts installed on the computer as opposed to just the latex font packages and to have fancy ligatures and other advanced typographic features. I can live without it, though, since all of those things are purely cosmetic, and documents just as professional can be created with regular latex.

I use LaTex as my day-to-day application for preparing all my work reports. I use Texmaker and Kile as LaTex editor in Slackware. You can find a slack 13.0 slackbuild for Texmaker at slackbuild.org. For Kile, you have to build it from the sources (version 2.1beta 2). Although, it's still a beta version I found it very stable.
If you type huge nasty equations , you should consider running TexAide through Wine. This will save you a lot of time when dealing with very complex equations.
Hope this will help.
About the TeTex lacking packages, I wonder how is that possible. I have been using TeTex for years and never came across a missing package. Can you give an example of a missing package in Tetex?

I use TeXLive extensively with Slackware and I've never had any problems with stability, incompatibilities, etc.

The TeTeX version that ships with Slackware is quite good, but a little out-dated. My experience (and I haven't used TeTeX in a year or two) was that it was very complete, except for lacking some newer packages and having some older revisions of recently updated ones. The primary reason that I switched to TexLive was so that I would have the latest version of the PGF package. The TeTeX version was quite old and not fully compatible with the current version.

I don't use emacs, so I have no idea how well it handles TeX files, but vim handles TeX and BibTeX files nicely. I tend to use Kile for editing TeX files more than any of the other options. It can be customized to call non-standard programs when building the output, which is quite useful if you are using something like the sagetex package. As Escaflown mentioned, you will need to build Kile from the source, but if you have a full install of Slackware 13 (either 32 or 64) all of the dependencies should already be installed.

I've used XeLaTeX on Slackware. The stock Slackware TeX package doesn't include it, but someone posted a Slackbuild to package TexLive to this forum (just seach for texlive). I had good luck with it, but read the entire post.

Hi, Allamgir,

I am using happily texlive in Slackware. Take a look at this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hlight=texlive
There are scripts posted there that package texlive-2008.

tetex that slackware still ships with is obsolete and nobody in the latex forums is willing to help once they here that you are using something obsolete like tetex.

Indeed, I can agree that texlive works flawlessly (so far) with slackware (note that you are replacing tetex with texlive, so you have to remove it first).

I just followed the installation instructions for the ISO and it worked just fine.

Oh, and I do like LyX, the fact that it doesn't try to be a WYSIWYG editor, and that it lets you type LaTeX directly makes it a great editor (IMHO, of course).

I agree fully with this.

For the moment being teTeX is good enough. It used to be one of the most complete, consistent and generally best TeX/LaTeX distributions. But as it is not actively maintained, anymore, texlive has taken the crown.

gargamel

Because I haven't used TeX/LaTeX often in the last few years, I forgot some details of the syntax and other things. I found LyX a great help for occasional users like me. In the days when I used TeX/LaTeX daily, I was quite happy with Vim.

BTW, as good as LyX is, I like Kile even more, and I hope for a KDE 4 version of it.

gargamel