LaTeX on WSL

Isshiki🐈
1 min readSep 12, 2020

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WSL is by no mean your best option for LaTeX but I don’t have my Mac around for the time being, so…

Install LaTeX

sudo apt install texlive

Write something (How to open GUI editors from WSL can be found here)

vim file.tex
#or
notepad++.exe file.tex

Compile .tex file

# generate a .dvi file
latex file.tex
# generate a .pdf file
pdflatex file.tex

If you need some packages that do not come along with the installation, you may install them using apt like

sudo apt install texlive-latex-recommended
# or
sudo apt install texlive-latex-base
# or
sudo apt install texlive-latex-full

More on the differences between these packages can be found here

More on LaTeX can be found here

p.s.

This nearly bare-bone setup turns out working great. It’s true that you don’t have a GUI with it but perhaps its simplicity can be a life saver for many first time LaTeX users.

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