Here is a walkthrough for those who wish to install a TeX distribution in their Operating system, but who don’t know the right place from where they should start, and who are not so familiar with google searches.

1. For Windows : Installing MikTeX is easy and has already been well described by others. That’s why rather than describing you the installation process, look at this page :
   Tutorial of the installation of MikTeX by Philippe Goutet, professor at the University Paris 6 (Jussieu).
   For english users who don’t understand french, and who wish to understand this page, you have 2 choices : (1) to focus on images and ignore the french explanations (2) to understand that if you don’t play video games, you should install Ubuntu on your computer as a replacement of Microsoft Windows, and follow the second item of this post
2. For GNU/Linux part 1 : You can install TeXlive 2009 with the package manager. With Ubuntu, open Ubuntu Software center, search for texlive-full, and install it :



3. For GNU/Linux part 2 : If for any reason, you prefer to install the latest TeXlive version, currently 2010, then do as follows :
   • Go here and download install-tl.zip :
   • Then, expand the archive, open it, copy the install-tl in your home directory, open a terminal (type alt+F2 and in the prompt enter “gnome-terminal” without the quotes), launch install-tl with “sudo ./install-tl -gui”, and enter your password :
   • After that the installation interface will launch :
     You don’t have to make any change, just click the button at the bottom, on the left (in english it may be “install TeX Live”, in japanese it is “TeX Live の導入”). Then, the installation process will begin (you may have to wait more than 1h until it finishes, so be patient) :

     

   • After this installation process is finished, you will have to add a PATH to get your installation work. For this, add the following lines at the end of your .bashrc (type alt+f2 and enter in the prompt “gedit /home/username/.bashrc”, where username is you user name) :
     

     PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/i386-linux:$PATH; export PATH
     MANPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/man:$MANPATH; export MANPATH
     INFOPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/info:$INFOPATH; export INFOPATH

     Here is a screenshot :

     

     Add the same lines in your .profile (/home/username/.profile)

   • Finally, if you use TeXWorks, open TeXworks, go in Edition, Settings, Typesetting :

     Then, add the path “/usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/i386-linux” :

     

     And everything will work well.

4. For FreeBSD : the installation process is similar to the one for GNU/Linux I have described in the second part. But if you use the default shell, that is to say, csh, you will just have to change the PATH. It might be something like the following :
   

   setenv PATH /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/i386-freebsd:$PATH
   setenv MANPATH /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/man:$MANPATH
   setenv INFOPATH /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/info:$INFOPATH

5. For Mac OSX : MacTeX is the distibution Mac users should use. Download the zip file located here. Then, unzip it, click on the *.dmg file and install it. You will notice that you have TeXworks installed in your TeX folder located in your Applications folder. TeXworks is an easy to use and good TeX editor.

In all cases (Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX), if you are a beginner, then use TeXWorks. For GNU/Linux, Kile is also a good choice, but if you don’t plan to typeset mathematical symbols, TeXWorks may remain a better choice with useful options (such as commenting a block of text, very useful) which are not available in Kile. But of course, the choice of your TeX editor depends on several variables such as your skills, your habit. That’s why I would recommend to try both if you don’t know or simply hesitate.

If you are not a beginner, then use Emacs or Vim. I will write a post about these text editors soon.