LaTeX Setup

TeX System

You need to install a TeX distribution.

Windows

There are two notable TeX distributions for windows. TexLive and MikTeX. MikTex only installs a very basic TeX system. Additional packages required by the template will be installed via a package manager. MikTeX is capable of upgrading its installation and packages. The template author uses MikTeX. TexLive includes a lot of packages and requires therefore more disk space than MikTeX, but it is harder for the user to break comparing to MikTeX, because TeXLive is not as flexible as MikTeX. The template should work with either.

MacOS

There is MacTex, which is comparable to TeXLive. MikTeX is also available for macOS.

Linux

Kindly ask your package manager. Most linux distributions bundle TexLive. MikTeX is also available for Linux.

Editor

Next you need an editor. There is a bunch of choices, starting from plain notepad upto "IDE's", like TeXMaker. Some programs are presented here. The templates author uses VSCode with the LaTeX Workshop extension.

Compilation

To get a PDF file from LaTeX code compilation is required. Compiling the document requires multiple programs have to be invoked in correct order (latex -> biber -> latex -> latex). There exist multiple options to automate that process. The author strongly recommends to use latexmk, as it is easiest to install and use. latexmk is already inculded in TeXLive. If you use MikTeX, you have to install the latexmk package from the MikTex Console. latexmk requires Perl, which is not availble per default on Windows. You might want to install StrawberryPerl.