Some forums have good support for math formulas via latex but if something takes a long time to write (e.g. I'm working out the ideas) then I would rather generate the latex localy than via some forum software. I googled "latex linux" and read, "9 Best LaTeX Editors For Linux".
The first program that caught my eye was gummi. I found the split window showing the preview on the right and the latex code on the left appealing. I intially couldn't get gummi to work so also installed lyx and kile. Kile is more of an IDE and lyx is a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. Lyx might be a good candidate to replace the word processor in a math/science oriented version of puppylinux.
I had the same issues with lyx as I did with gummi and the issue was related to missing configuration files for texlive. After failing to resolve this via installing multiple tex/tek/latex related packages from the debian repos, I discovered there was an installation script for a so-called vanilla version of texlive that one could install that was independent of the debian repos. I was able to use this vanilla version of texlive to get gummi working with only a few files borrowed from the debian repos and in general this small hack/fix to get it to work might not be typically necessary and might only be due to a random error that occured during installation. I won't know of course until I here if others have experienced the same problem and if so they will be fortunate to have my small fixes available.
Prior to installing the Vanilla version first install the following debian packages
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tex-common, texinfo, and perhaps lmodern
The vanilla version of tex live can be downloaded from:
http://ctan.mirror.globo.tech/systems/texlive/Source/
** other mirrors can be found at: https://ctan.org/mirrors
Download the file install-tl-unx.tar.gz
Extract the file and and in the extracted directory run:
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perl install-tl
the software will be installed to the following directory:
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/usr/local/texlive/2020
Now update the files by first
downloading the script "update-tlmgr-latest.sh"
and then running it in the following directory "/usr/local/texlive/2020" with the code:
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sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh -- --upgrade
Assuming that your path variable is set correctly and you are in a terminal with the working directory at "/usr/local/texlive/2020" then you can test your upgrade with the following code:
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tlmgr -gui
If the upgrade worked then when you click the load default button the local versions shouldmatch the remote repo.
Now assuming you are running the terminal in the same directory and the PATH variable is still correct, try starting gummi. Check to see if there are any missing files. I was missing pdftexconfig.tex hyphen.tex. I identified which debian package these were located in:
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$ grep -rn /var/packages -e pdftexconfig.tex
/var/packages/texlive-base_2018.20190227-2_all.files:1524:/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/tex-ini-files/pdftexconfig.tex
$ grep -rn /var/packages -e hyphen.tex
/var/packages/texlive-base_2018.20190227-2_all.files:1511:/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex
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/usr/local/texlive/2020/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig
#and
/usr/local/texlive/2020/texmf-dist/tex/generic/hyphen
#respectively.
I was also able to get octave working both on dupupbuster32 and fatdog64. For fatdog64 you must load devx for octave to work. On dpupbuster you can install the files that are part of devX in pkg using the HIDE_BUILTINS=false option. You might also need the -f option. I recommend using the latest version of pkg rather than the one that come with dpupubuster. You can also on fatdog64 install packages that are part of devX but I advise against this because depending on the package it might cause compatibility issue.
As a final note if you are installing texlive in PUPMODE=13 (i.e. pmedia=usbflash) you might run out of memory on an older laptop. One could get around this by saving during installation or creating a swap file. Alternatively one could reboot in PUPMODE=12 (i.e. pmedia=usbhd). Perhaps it was the saving during installation that caused me to miss a few files that I had to obtain from the debian repos.
More complete installation instructions can be found at:
https://www.tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive ... stallation