TeX Live is a TeX

TeX

TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

 distribution which is the replacement of its no-longer supported counterpart teTeX

TeTeX

teTeX is a TeX distribution for Unix-like systems. As of May 2006 teTeX is no longer actively maintained and its former maintainer Thomas Esser recommended TeX Live as the replacement....

.
It is now the default TeX distribution for several Linux distributions such as Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

, Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

and Gentoo

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...

.
Other Unix operating systems like OpenBSD

OpenBSD

OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...

, FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

 and NetBSD

NetBSD

NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...

 are also converting from teTeX to TeX Live.

The project was originally started by Sebastian Rahtz in 1996 in collaboration with the TeX users groups worldwide, including the TeX Users Group. Today, it is maintained by Karl Berry.

Up to version 2009, TeX Live could be run directly, or “live”, from a CD ROM, from a DVD ROM, or from any other mobile device, hence its name. As from TeX Live 2010 it was no longer possible to run the distribution from the TeX Collection DVD due to restrictions in storage space. TeX Live follows the TeX Directory Structure

TeX Directory Structure

TeX Directory Structure is a directory hierarchy for macros, fonts, and the other implementation-independent TeX systemfiles. The top-level directories areTDS is used by several TeX distributions, including teTeX, TeX Live and MiKTeX....

.

Since the 2009 release, the editor TeXworks

TeXworks

TeXworks is an open source application software, available for Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X. It is a graphical user interface to the typesetting system TeX and its extensions LaTeX, ConTeXt, and XeTeX....

 is included for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Mac OS X as well as the vector graphics language Asymptote

Asymptote (vector graphics language)

Asymptote is a descriptive vector graphics language, developed by Andy Hammerlindl, John C. Bowman , and Tom Prince, that provides a natural coordinate-based framework for technical drawing. Asymptote runs on all major platforms...

.

For Mac OS X there is MacTeX

MacTeX

MacTeX is a redistribution of TeX Live. While TeX Live is designed to be cross-platform , MacTeX includes Mac-specific utilities and front-ends...

 which comprises TeX Live as well as some additional tools for using TeX on the Mac, most notably the editor TeXShop

TeXShop

TeXShop is a free TeX editor and previewer for Mac OS X. It is licensed under the GNU GPL.It was developed by the American mathematician Richard Koch. TeXShop was created especially for the Mac OS X user interface Aqua and capitalized on the native PDF support of the Macintosh operating system...

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External links

• http://www.tug.org/texlive/