We list here the free or shareware packages; another question addresses commercial TeX vendors' products.
ftp are to be found in
unixtex.ftp, though nowadays the sensible installer will
take (and possibly customise) one of the packaged distributions such
as teTeX (which often has a more recent version of
web2c embedded than has been released "in the wild"), or the
TeX Live CDROM (see TeX CDROMs).
For teTeX, you
need at most one each of the .tar.gz files for teTeX-src,
teTeX-texmf and teTeX-texmfsrc
Sets of binaries for many common Unix systems are to be found as
part of the teTeX distribution, or on the TeX Live CDROM.
There are rather more to be found on CTAN; you'll find
compressed .tar archive for each supported architecture in the
directory. In default of a precompiled version, teTeX will
compile on most Unix systems, though it was originally developed for
use under Linux (see below).
MacOS X users should refer to the information below, under item "Mac".
Beware the Slackware '96 CDROM distribution of NTeX: it includes a version of the CM fonts that has deeply offended Don Knuth (since it contravenes his distribution conditions). The Slackware updates now offer teTeX, as do most Linux distributions. The most recent offering is a free version of the commercial VTeX, which specialises in direct production of PDF from (La)TeX input.
A version of emTeX, packaged to use a TDS directory structure, is separately available as an emTeX 'contribution'.
texmf tree as a teTeX installation). fpTeX's
previewer (Windvi) is based on xdvi, and takes
advantage of extra facilities in the Win32 environment.
Windvi is capable of printing directly, and a version of
dvips is also available.
MikTeX, by Christian Schenk, is also a comprehensive distribution, developed separately from the teTeX work. It has its own previewer, YAP, which is itself capable of printing, though the distribution also includes a port of dvips. The current version is available for file-by-file download (the HTML files in the directory offer hints on what you need to get going). A prepackaged version of the whole directory is also available.
A further (free) option arises from the "CygWin" bundle, which presents a Unix-like environment over the Win32 interface; an X-windows server is available. If you run CygWin on your Windows machine, you have the option of using teTeX, too (you will need the X-server, to run xdvi). Of course, teTeX components will look like Unix applications (but that's presumably what you wanted), but it's also reputedly somewhat slower than native Win32 implementations such as MikTeX or fpTeX. TeTeX is available as part of the CygWin distribution (in the same way that a version is available with most Linux distributions, nowadays), and you may also build your own copy from the current sources.
BaKoMa TeX, by Basil Malyshev, is a comprehensive (shareware) distribution, which focuses on support of Acrobat. The distribution comes with a bunch of Type 1 fonts packaged to work with BaKoMa TeX, which further the focus.
UK TUG prepays the shareware fee, so that its members may acquire the software without further payment. Questions about OzTeX may be directed to [email protected]
Another partly shareware program is CMacTeX, put together by Tom Kiffe. This is much closer to the Unix TeX setup (it uses dvips, for instance). CMacTeX includes a port of the latest version of Omega.
Both OzTeX and CMacTeX are additionally available on MacOS X, but OS X users also have the option of a build of teTeX by Gerben Wierda. This is naturally usable from the command line, just like any other Unix-based system, but it can also be used Mac-style as the engine behind Richard Koch's (free) TeXShop, which is an integrated TeX editor and previewer.
A useful resource for Mac users has a news and 'help' section, as well as details of systems and tools.
If anonymous ftp is not available to you, send a message
containing the line 'help' to
[email protected]
ftp from ftp.math.utah.edu
in pub/tex/pub/web