TeX Live

TeX Live at a glance

TeX Live is a comprehensive distribution of the TeX typesetting system. It contains the major TeX engines, macro packages, fonts and helper programs for Linux, macOS and Windows. Many Linux distributions ship it through their package manager, and the TeX Users Group also provides its own installer.

A new major release appears once a year, usually in spring. Within a year, packages are updated continuously through the TeX Live Manager. When the next year begins, the project freezes the central repository of the previous release, so it no longer receives package updates.

For administrators, the turn of the year is therefore the critical moment. Before installing a new major release, documents that depend on specific package states should be built and compared in advance. Operating system packages often lag behind the upstream release, which matters when checking for currency.