Install texlive 2017 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Question

I tried to install texlive 2017 over 2015, but I got some error. It says

trying to overwrite '/usr/share/doc/texlive-doc/latex/mweights/README',
   which is also in package texlive-latex-extra-doc 2015.20160320-1
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)'

I used

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/texlive-2017
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install texlive-full

How can I fix it?

Solution 1

I ran into this issue yesterday and solved it iterative ... it took quite some time.

The error message also points to the downloaded .deb-package. You can force installation with: dpkg -i --force all /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-...york0_all.deb

This will install the package with a lot of warnings, but you can proceed with sudo apt install -f (I actually used dist-upgrade) until the next crash. I had to repeat this procedure for six packages.

When installation succeeded and no more packages break the process with the mentioned error, I once restarted sudo apt dist-upgrade to complete the installation.

I went this way, because apt purge texlive-full was not possible due its corrupt state.

Solution 2

To install the latest and greatest TeXLive 2017, run the following code in your terminal:

curl -sL http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz | tar zxf - && mv install-tl-20* install-tl
cd install-tl
echo "selected_scheme scheme-full" > profile \
  && ./install-tl -repository http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet -profile profile
export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2017/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH

And when you want to update the packages when you want, you can issue this command: tlmgr update --all.

(full install instructions may be found on the tug website)

If you don't want to install anything, here is the docker image with TeXLive 2017 with Pandoc- a versatile universal document converter.

Enjoy!!

Solution 3

The packages on the PPA you are using do not seem to provide a clean upgrade from the official Ubuntu packages (the same file belongs to one package in the official repositories, and to another in the PPA). Therefore you need to uninstall your existing TeX Live packages before you can install those from the PPA.

Alternatively, don't use a PPA at all and just use the installer provided by the TeX Live developers.

And by the way, no, you don't need texlive-full. Installing it makes about as much sense as installing all the packages from the Ubuntu repositories.

Comments

[Admin]

removing texlive2015 first then installing texlive2017 works.

[Admin]

Ubuntu 17.04 and the above runs without error :)

[onknows]

Great tip! Using a Docker image is as easy as can be.

[wordsforthewise]

echo and install-tl needed to be prefix with sudo for me

[wordsforthewise]

The last command should be PATH=... right?

[einpoklum]

@onknows: Disagree. It's as wasteful as can be.

[Max N]

can you make Suman Khanals answer better and enlighten us how to not install everything?

[Max N]

Now when in TeXstudio, how can I make it actually use the new binaries?

[Marie]

This installed TeXLive 2019 for me. So the PATH command at the end needed to be changed to export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2019/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH