{"slug": "tex-live", "name": "TeX Live", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 3.35, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-12-25", "latest": "2026-03-22", "why": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "tug.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://tug.org/texlive/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["TeX Live"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 759764368, "item_id": 47485273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47485273", "by": "bombcar", "date": "2026-03-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals", "excerpt": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals in PDF format; I often end up reading them when on a plane. I'd love something like Kiwi designed to be like modern online-sharing software like Box etc where it just caches stuff until your drive is mostly full, deleting as necessary.", "context": "", "use_case": "Reading offline manuals on planes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Project Nomad \u2013 Knowledge That Never Goes Offline"}, {"id": 756374657, "item_id": 47273416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47273416", "by": "sombragris", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release.", "excerpt": "Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release. If you're stuck on something LaTeX related, remember there's the latest edition to The LaTex Companion. It even has an appendix explaining the (in)famously cryptic LaTeX/TeX error messages: https://latex-project.org/help/books/ There's also, among other resources, the great LaTeX Font Catalogue: https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/ Enjoy the new release!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802847233, "item_id": 50177952, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177952", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you probably won't be able to use any version of TeX Live newer than TL20", "excerpt": "> I'd be curious how far eXTeX gets with modern LaTeX documents in practice. The LaTeX kernel requires some primitives [0] that are unlikely to be supported in a 15-year-old engine, so you probably won't be able to use any version of TeX Live newer than TL20. [0]: https://texdoc.org/serve/ltnews31/0#section*.29 [1]: https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/keentype", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shipping a LaTeX Compiler Behind an Edge App"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["reading offline manuals on planes"], "compared": [{"slug": "latex", "name": "LaTeX", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 791107696, "item_id": 49444231, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444231", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we (the TeX Live team) would be happy to add Wasm as an officially-supported platform", "excerpt": "Why you choose to base this off of TeX Live 2020? Is that just when you initially started the project, or are there some incompatibilities with the later versions? Also, we (the TeX Live team) would be happy to add Wasm as an officially-supported platform, it's just that nobody has volunteered yet [0]. Coincidentally, someone else suggested something similar to us a few months ago [1]. Feel free to reach out if you'r", "context": "member of the TeX Live team", "use_case": "TeX distribution", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: TeXbrain, a LaTeX editor that runs pdfTeX in the browser via WASM"}, {"id": 776241440, "item_id": 48515090, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515090", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the TeX engines give excellent error messages", "excerpt": "(Disclaimer: I'm on the TeX Live team) > cryptic error messages These have somewhat improved recently, but I agree that they're still not great. > complex pipeline You can typically just run \"latexmk --lualatex <filename.tex>\" and your document should compile in a single step. > lack of the proper Unicode symbols support out of the box UTF-8 has been the default input encoding since 2018 [0], so character input shoul", "context": "TeX Live team member", "use_case": "TeX typesetting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271187", "title": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149609", "title": "Shipping a LaTeX Compiler Behind an Edge App", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49441375", "title": "Show HN: TeXbrain, a LaTeX editor that runs pdfTeX in the browser via WASM", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467697", "title": "Tectonic: A modernized, complete, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47476821", "title": "Project Nomad \u2013 Knowledge That Never Goes Offline", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46381637", "title": "Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802847233, "item_id": 50177952, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177952", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "you probably won't be able to use any version of TeX Live newer than TL20", "excerpt": "> I'd be curious how far eXTeX gets with modern LaTeX documents in practice. The LaTeX kernel requires some primitives [0] that are unlikely to be supported in a 15-year-old engine, so you probably won't be able to use any version of TeX Live newer than TL20. [0]: https://texdoc.org/serve/ltnews31/0#section*.29 [1]: https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/keentype", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Shipping a LaTeX Compiler Behind an Edge App"}, {"id": 759764368, "item_id": 47485273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47485273", "by": "bombcar", "date": "2026-03-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals", "excerpt": "I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals in PDF format; I often end up reading them when on a plane. I'd love something like Kiwi designed to be like modern online-sharing software like Box etc where it just caches stuff until your drive is mostly full, deleting as necessary.", "context": "", "use_case": "Reading offline manuals on planes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Project Nomad \u2013 Knowledge That Never Goes Offline"}, {"id": 756438336, "item_id": 47277396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47277396", "by": "ontouchstart", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I found out the other day that llama.cpp can work with PDF images offline without Internet connection. Combine with local Rustdoc and TeXLive, playing with plan TeX becomes fun again. https://ontouchstart.github.io/rabbit-holes/tex_rabbit_hole_gentle/index.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 756406561, "item_id": 47275410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47275410", "by": "leephillips", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve written book-length documents in Plain TeX (probably what you mean \u2014 nobody writes in \u201craw\u201d tex) and in LaTeX. I would say that Typst, if it\u2019s a replacement for anything, is a replacement for LuaLaTeX, because of its programmability. But in this article I framed it as a possible LaTeX replacement: https://lwn.net/Articles/1037577/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 756374657, "item_id": 47273416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47273416", "by": "sombragris", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release.", "excerpt": "Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release. If you're stuck on something LaTeX related, remember there's the latest edition to The LaTex Companion. It even has an appendix explaining the (in)famously cryptic LaTeX/TeX error messages: https://latex-project.org/help/books/ There's also, among other resources, the great LaTeX Font Catalogue: https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/ Enjoy the new release!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 756367040, "item_id": 47272940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272940", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Here's the list of notable changes in TeX Live 2026", "excerpt": "Here's the list of notable changes in TeX Live 2026 [0]. LaTeX is released independently from TeX Live, so looking through its changelog [1] is also helpful if you haven't updated recently. [0]: https://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html#x1-940009.2 [1]: https://www.latex-project.org/news/latex2e-news/ltnews.pdf#issue42.0", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 756366816, "item_id": 47272926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272926", "by": "gucci-on-fleek", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "You can still install old versions going back to the 90s [0]. If you specifically want to update/install a package on a current installation of TeX Live 2025, you just need to run tlmgr repository set https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/historic/systems/texlive/2025/tlnet-final (You can replace that URL with any of the historic mirrors in [0]) [0]: https://tug.org/historic/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 756363297, "item_id": 47272706, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272706", "by": "mr_mitm", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "You wrote a LaTeX document. ConTeXt does not claim to be compatible with LaTeX. You can find a \"hello world\" here: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Document_layout_and_layers/Tutorials", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "TeX Live 2026 is available for download now"}, {"id": 742201840, "item_id": 46387615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46387615", "by": "patrickg", "date": "2025-12-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use the standard binary from TeX-live", "excerpt": "I use the standard binary from TeX-live and use the integrated harfbuzz loader, which works like a charm. The downloadable ZIP is ready to run and does not need any additional libraries. (That said, I include some helpers, for example for https access. )", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes"}]}