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I used to use LaTeX in Windows and there was Miktex Package Manager with which it was very easy to add a missing package. I wanted to install textcomp to Ubuntu 11.10 and it requires me to download the zip from here and find the packages which are in /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex in my case, extract the zip contents to there, and update the packages.

Is there a package manager which does installation and removal in an easier way like the Miktex Package Manager in Windows?

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I advise to recur to an installation by hand of a tex package only when such tex package is not available in an ubuntu package.

Searching for it with

apt-file -x search '/textcomp.sty$'

I obtain the following results:

texlive-latex-base: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/base/textcomp.sty

and it say the tex package you look for is contained in the ubuntu package whose name is texlive-latex-base, so install it, if not already installed.

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base

By the way, apt-file is a command to install separately contained in the apt-file package, and only a convenient and alternative way to search into the repositories the same way as http://packages.ubuntu.com/.

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  • This is just great! I didn't know that all the packages I need were already in texlive-latex-base and texlive-latex-extra. Thanks. – petrichor Oct 28 '11 at 4:59
  • My dear friend, after so much time looking, this was the easiest and fastest way that I was able to get some packages running! Kudos to you! – Sos Jun 25 '13 at 16:09
  • If you discover that you already have the package installed but it doesn't seem to work, remove it using apt-get and then install it again. This worked for me for two different packages even though it said they were up to date. – haventchecked Dec 12 '14 at 3:09
  • +1 for teaching me about the apt-file utility. I can't believe I'd never come across it before. – arr_sea Oct 18 '16 at 16:45

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