TeX Live documentation

After you obtain the TeX Live distribution, please read the documentation for TeX Live, which includes installation instructions for Unix and Windows. For MacOSX, we recommend installing MacTeX, which contains all of TeX Live (and more).

The TeX Live guide is available in several languages and formats:

• English documentation - HTML.
• English documentation - PDF.
• Other languages: Simplified Chinese, Czech/Slovak, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian.

If you don't care to read documentation, and just want to install everything, try this quick Unix install recipe, and/or installation for Windows, and/or MacTeX for MacOSX.

A separate page describes installing/updating packages after the original installation. Another page describes highlights of changes in this release.

Additional manuals

Overviews of the TeX Live Installer (install-tl) and TeX Live Manager (tlmgr) are also available.

Online links to additional information and documentation for some of the basic components of the TeX system:
web2c - tds - pdftex - kpathsea - dvips.

TeX Live also includes hundreds of manuals of all kinds (including all the above)—the documentation that the individual package and program authors have provided, mostly in the texmf*/doc subdirectories. The top-level doc.html file in the distribution has a comprehensive listing.

Supported systems

Binaries for the following systems are included in this year's release:

alpha-linux	DEC Alpha with GNU/Linux
amd64-freebsd	x86_64 with FreeBSD
amd64-kfreebsd	x86_64 with GNU/FreeBSD
i386-cygwin	Intel x86 with Cygwin
i386-freebsd	Intel x86 with FreeBSD
i386-kfreebsd	Intel x86 with GNU/FreeBSD
i386-linux	Intel x86 with GNU/Linux
i386-netbsd	Intel x86 with NetBSD
i386-solaris	Intel x86 with Solaris
mips-irix	SGI IRIX
powerpc-aix	PowerPC with AIX
powerpc-linux	PowerPC with GNU/Linux
sparc-linux	Sparc with GNU/Linux
sparc-solaris	Sparc with Solaris
universal-darwin	(MacOSX for both PowerPC and x86; bash.dmg available for bootstrap)
win32	Windows
x86_64-darwin	x86_64 with MacOSX/Darwin
x86_64-linux	x86_64 with GNU/Linux
x86_64-solaris	x86_64 with Solaris

If you can help by providing binaries for systems not listed here, please see the TeX Live build information.

Translations for install-tl and tlmgr

The messages in the TeX Live installer and TeX Live Manager are available in various languages (when running in GUI mode only; we want to keep text mode as simple as possible). If your language is not available and you want to help by providing a translation:

• Copy messages.pot to LL.po, where LL is your language code.
• If you want to be able to test, get the TL sources and put LL.po in your Master/tlpkg/translations/ directory.
• Translate the strings, either manually or using a PO editor. Instructions and tips for using poedit (a PO editor for Unix and Windows) with TeX Live are available in howto-translations.txt.
• To test, run install-tl -gui or install-tl -gui wizard. You can use the option -lang LL to test independently of the system LC_MESSAGES or Registry settings.
• When satisfied, email tex-live@tug.org with the new file.

Thanks.