LaTeX on Windows Vista SP2: Installation

Three things are needed to run Latex on a Windows box: MiKTeX, Ghostscript, and GSView. The last makes life easy. There are also editors you can buy that integrate these packages and offer a complete editor environment but for me a basic text editor works the best; There is one on every system.

MiKTeX 2.9

Download MiKTeX (pronounced mick-tech) which is the freeware Latex implementation for PCs with Windows OS. The latest version is 2.9 (Beta as of this writing) which was released on 9/26/10.

I downloaded the "Basic MiKTeX 2.9" Installer (137 MB) from mirror.ctan.org (there was no other option.) The installation was pain-free:

• Launch installer and accept license agreement.
• Elected to install MiKTeX for anyone who uses the computer.
• Accepted the default install directory: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\
• Set preferred paper to ‘Letter’ and ‘ask’ installing missing packages.
• Review installation settings and click ‘Start'.’

The installation took about 7 minutes. (It could have been a bit less but I was distracted as Pittsburgh was beating up on Cincinnati!)

Done with step 1.

Ghostscript 9.00 and GSView 4.9

Ghostscript is an interpreter for the PostScript language. As mentioned in the Ghostscript website:

Ghostscript has several main uses:

1. Display a PostScript file (avoid killing trees).
2. Display a PostScript file to decide if you really need to print it (reduce the number of trees killed).
3. Print a PostScript file to a non-PostScript printer (kill more trees).

The latest version is 9.0 released on 09/17/10.

GSView is a graphical interface for Ghostscript for Windows-based systems.

Start by downloading Ghostscript 9.00 for 32-bit Windows. The link is located at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/GPL/gpl900.htm under Microsoft Windows. The self extracting package is a bit less than 15 MB. After the download completes:

• Run the executable.
• Click ‘Setup’.
• Accept the defaults and click ‘Install’. About 10 seconds later the installation is complete.

Now go to GSView 4.9 download page and select to download the 32bit Windows installer. The size of the GSView installer is 1.5 MB. After the download completes:

• Run the executable.
• Click ‘Setup’.
• Click ‘Next’ a few times to accept the defaults.
• Click ‘Finish’ and the installation will complete in seconds.