LaTeX is awesome. LaTeX on Linux is even better. So, in order to get the best functionality of this software, it is then necessary to have several libraries.

Method A: the easy one

If you don’t care about memory and resources, an easy solution consists in installing almost everything using the following script:

sudo apt-get install texlive-full texlive-extra-utils texlive-font-utils texlive-latex-recommended

Method B: the cool one

However, if you are away from windows alike massive programs and require more control over your stuff, the steps are quite simple:

  • find your package on the CRAN website (You don’t need to open an external browser, use Lynx instead - see the related post) and download all the files.

  • have look at the ‘ReadMe’ file - sometimes the package needs special configuration which is indicated in it.

unzip package-downloaded.zip

latex package-downloaded.ins

  • move the files to /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic. NOTE: It might be any folder inside tex, even a new one, however it is mandatory to consider that the new file needs to be visible for latex, so inside an existing one is enough.

  • run the following command in order to re-generate the active structure in latex.

sudo mktexlsr

I hope this has been useful. I recommend to search directly on the CRAN website instead of loading a ppa-key.