TeX Live

TeX Live is intended to be a straightforward way to get up and running with the TeX document production system. It provides a comprehensive TeX system with binaries for most flavors of Unix, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and also Windows. It includes all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software, including support for many languages around the world. Many operating systems provide it via their own distributions.

• How to acquire TeX Live: download, on DVD, other methods.

• Quick install for Unix; installation and release notes for Windows; for MacOSX, see the MacTeX distribution.
• Documentation.
• Contact and mailing lists.
• Known issues and highlights of changes in the current release (details for LuaTeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX).

• Portable (USB and DVD) usage of TeX Live.
• Installing/updating packages after installation and full upgrade from previous years.

• TeX Live licensing, and integration with operating system distributions.
• Development source repository, and building the sources.
• How you can help.

• Current release: TeX Live 2020 is available over the Internet and (after production) on DVD. It was released on 10 April 2020, and ongoing updates are available.
• The GPG public key we use to sign our releases. (You can view the contents with gpg --show-keyring texlive.asc, or --list-options show-keyring depending on your gpg version.)

Some starting points for actually using TeX are in this introduction to the TeX world.

By the way, if you don't care for TeX Live's setup for whatever reason, the major (free software) alternative is MiKTeX, which also runs on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Plan for TeX Live 2021:
15feb: candidate/final sources committed, test builds begin.
25feb: tlpretest starts, CTAN updates continue there and in tlnet.
10mar: code freeze for final build, major bug fixes only.
22mar: final updates from CTAN, final doc tweaks.
23mar: deliver TL image for TeX Collection packaging/testing.
1apr: deliver TeX Collection DVD image for manufacturing.
1apr: public release (also of MacTeX).
June?: delivery of DVDs to members.

TeX Live has been developed since 1996 by collaboration between the TeX user groups. TeX Live was originally perpetrated by Sebastian Rahtz. Present miscreants include Akira Kakuto, Karl Berry, Luigi Scarso, Mojca Miklavec, Norbert Preining, Reinhard Kotucha, Siep Kroonenberg, and a cast of thousands.