Using Overleaf is straightforward — until you hit compile timeouts or lose your internet connection. Once your project grows large enough, that spinning wheel becomes a familiar frustration. The free tier has its limits, and working offline is simply not an option — at some point, moving to a local TeX Live installation starts making a lot of sense.

This post documents my setup. Whether you’re setting this up for the first time or something isn’t working quite right, hopefully this saves you a few hours.

Download and Install

We’ll be installing TeX Live 2024 in full, from an ISO file. This is the most reliable method — no network interruptions, no partial downloads, and you get every package upfront.

1. Download the ISO

Grab the full ISO from the: official TeX Live page. The file is large (~5GB), so grab a coffee.

2. Mount the ISO

Once downloaded, mount the ISO to a temporary directory:

sudo mkdir /mnt/texlive
sudo mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop,noauto /your/texlive.iso /mnt/texlive

💡 Replace /your/texlive.iso with the actual path to your downloaded file. e.g. ~/downloands/texlive2024-20240312.iso

3. Run the Installer

Navigate into the mounted directory and launch the installer with sudo:

cd /mnt/texlive
sudo ./install-tl

You’ll be dropped into a text-based menu. To kick off the full installation, type I then hit Enter.

⚠️ The full installation takes a while (20–40 min depending on your machine). Don’t close the terminal.

4. Configure Your PATH

After installation, TeX Live won’t be on your system’s PATH yet — you’ll need to add it manually so commands like pdflatex and tlmgr are recognized in your terminal.

Add the following lines to your shell config file: For Zsh — ~/.zshrc, For Bash — ~/.bashrc

export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2024/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH
export MANPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/doc/man
export INFOPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/doc/info

💡 Not sure which shell you’re using? Run echo $SHELL in your terminal.

Then reload your config to apply the changes immediately:

# For Zsh
source ~/.zshrc

# For Bash
source ~/.bashrc

5. Verify the Installation

Once your PATH is configured, open a new terminal and run the following commands to confirm everything is working:

tex --version

You should see something like:

TeX 3.141592653 (TeX Live 2024)
kpathsea version 6.4.0
...

Then verify the package manager:

tlmgr --version

Expected output:

tlmgr revision 70080 (2024-02-23 00:13:07 +0100)
tlmgr using installation: /usr/local/texlive/2024
TeX Live (https://tug.org/texlive) version 2024

✅ If both commands return version info, you’re all set.

❌ If you get command not found, your PATH wasn’t applied correctly — go back and double-check the previous step, then run source ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc) again.

Wrapping Up

That’s the full setup — TeX Live 2024 installed from ISO, PATH configured, and VSCodium ready to go with LaTeX Workshop. The goal was to have a local, self-contained LaTeX environment that doesn’t depend on Overleaf’s compile limits or an internet connection. Once it’s running, it’s fast, reliable, and fully under your control.