Student access to LaTeX
LaTeX on Students' Personal Devices
Most students who use LaTeX start out with using a free Overleaf Links to an external site. account. You can do all the work in a browser window and it's easy to share files. This is a great place to start and one you might never feel the need to move on from!
If you do a lot of work using LaTeX, you may at some point want to install MiKTeX Links to an external site. (windows or linux), or MacTeX Links to an external site. (mac) and an editor. Note there are other distributions, these are two of the most popular.
LaTeX on Campus Computers
LaTeX is not installed on all computers on campus, but if you have an Overleaf account you can access Overleaf from a browser window from any of the computers on campus. Since LaTeX is virtual default for typesetting math, the math discipline computer lab Sci 3510 has MikTeX installed on all the computers in that lab (this is the computer lab that Calculus I and II are taught in, and is available for student use when not used by a class).
Can You Use LaTeX After Graduation?
Absolutely! LaTeX is free to use, so you can definitely continue using it after graduation. If you use it often, you might find you want to purchase an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for LaTeX. Here's a list of some that are available Links to an external site.. If you want some recommendations, ask faculty in your discipline who use LaTeX what they use.
Who should use LaTeX?
LaTeX was created to format mathematical equations properly, and to make writing technical papers with mathematical equations easy. If you are going to graduate school in math, statistics, computer science, or physics it would be helpful to learn some LaTeX as an undergraduate.