First, ftp to your nearest Linux archive site. Mine is
wuarchive.wustl.eduthen find the directory with the Slackware distribution diskettes. On wuarchive, this is
systems/linux/sunsite/distributions/slackware/slakwareMost Linux archives will store these diskettes in the directory distributions/slackware/slakware. teTeX, the full package, is contained on the slackware disk series t. So, grab all nine disks' worth of the t series, disks t1 - t9. It helps to keep them in order, too. Either store the files them in separate subdirectories labeled t1 - t9 on a hard drive partition, or on diskettes, and label the diskettes t1 through t9. We're going to install them, by hand, in order.
This is not difficult. The slackware installer creates the directories and unpacks the files. It also provides descriptions of each module in the distribution which allows you to decide whether you want to install it or not. In the case of teTeX, however, you are simply going to install everything, because that's what you should do anyway.
Installation will require about 30 Mb of disk space, so you should make sure that it's available before you start. You don't need to have the gcc compiler or the X Windows System installed (although X certainly is helpful because then you can preview documents on-screen). All you need is an editor that is capable of producing plain ascii text (see above). What could be simpler?
Let's assume that you have all nine diskettes' worth of the slackware teTeX distribution ready at hand, organized as described above. You'll have a lot of files that have the extension .tgz. This is shorthand for a gzipped tar archive. The names all fit the 8+3 filename limitations of MS-DOG. Aren't you glad you decided to scrap your DOG partitions and install Linux instead? You can use a MS-DOG hard disk partition or DOG-format diskettes to store the files. The archives also begin with the letters tb, td, or tm, and so on, which is the implementors' shorthand for TeX binary, TeX documentation, TeX macro, and so on. The difference to you is academic, because you'll be installing everything anyway.
Let's assume that you've assembled the slackware distribution on floppy diskettes, labelled t1 thru t9. Mount the t1 diskette like this
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
The next thing you want to do is create the teTeX top-level directory. teTeX's internal paths are specified relative to its binaries, but the Slackware distribution is archived relative to the root directory. So the top-level teTeX directory is
/usr/lib/teTeXso, for each of the .tgz archive files in the distribution, copy the archive file to the /usr/lib/teTeX directory and repeat the following commands:
cp /mnt/tb-xfig.tgz /usr/lib/teTeX gunzip /usr/lib/teTeX/tb-xfig.tgz tar -xvf /usr/lib/teTeX/tb-xfig.tar # v to see what's goint on! rm /usr/lib/teTeX/tb-xfig.tar
cp /mnt/* /usr/lib/teTeX gunzip /usr/lib/teTeX/* tar -xvf /usr/lib/teTeX/*tar rm /usr/lib/teTeX/*tar.
It's quite a rush, isn't it, watching all those filenames zipping by on the screen while the archives unpack onto your hard drive. Relax! Take a break, and freshen up your coffee (or grab another JOLT from the refrigerator, or otherwise replenish whatever you're drinking). There's only a few more steps. We'll take them in increasing order of difficulty.
The first thing you'll want to do is look at Thomas Esser's README file. It contains a lot of hints on how to configure teTeX for your output device (i.e., printer). The README file is located in the directory
/usr/lib/teTeX/texmf/doc/tetexRead the file over with the command
less /usr/lib/teTeX/texmf/doc/tetex/README
cat /usr/lib/teTeX/texmf/doc/tetex/README >/dev/lp0
Repeat these steps with the teTeX-FAQ. Keep the FAQ handy because it contains some very useful hints for configuring teTeX's output drivers for your printer. We'll get to that in a moment.
It is disappointing that the Linux Slackware Distribution doesn't come with a standard lpr daemon. That's probably because of the wide variations in printing hardware, but that's only my semi-informed guess. This would be the subject of another HOWTO, but any lpr/lpq suite that conforms to the standard BSD configuration should work just fine.
Next, you want to define a directory to store your own TeX format files. teTeX searches the directories listed by the $TEXINPUTS environment variable for local TeX input files. On Chanel3, I added the line
export TEXINPUTS=".:~/texinputs:"
Add the /usr/lib/teTeX/bin directory to systemwide path in whatever manner you usually do this, and restart the system to make sure the path and TEXINPUTS are registered properly; that is, globally.
Now, run texconfig per the instructions in the teTeX-FAQ and choose the printer that is attached to your system. Make sure that you have configured teTeX for both the correct printer and printer resolution.