Debian: Installing LaTeX, Compiling LaTeX PDF's and LaTeX plugin's for Pidgin and gedit

Installing LaTeX:

Install texlive-common using APT:

# apt-get install texlive-common

or if you would rather install the full texlive package (which is usually not necessary) install texlive-full.

Compiling LaTeX PDF's:

Using pdflatex you can compile your LaTeX code into an easily readable PDF. i.e:

$ pdflatex <outputfile>.pdf

Pidgin and LaTeX Plugin (pidginTeX):

Install imagemagick and download the pidginTeX olugin source code from Google Code (or here).

Extract the newly downloaded tar.gz (or tar.bz2) file and cd yourself into the related folder. Finally do a make and make install to install the plugin. i.e:

$ cd pidginTeX-<version number>/
$ make
# make install

NOTE: You must have installed LaTeX and either mimeTeX or mathTeX to use the plugin successfully.

gedit LaTeX plugin:

Download the latest Gedit LaTeX Plugin from sourceforge.net (or here).

Extract the contents of the file to '~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins'. You may have to make the plugins directory.