Learn how to install beamer on your operating system (Windows, Linux or Mac) and start creating beautiful LaTeX presentations.
Additional information on creating Beamer slide shows can be found in the document PackageSample-beamer.tex in the SWSamples directory. The last page of the sample document includes a link to the Beamer documentation where technical details for using Beamer can be found. Last revised 08/13/09. Additional information on creating Beamer slide shows can be found in the document PackageSample-beamer.tex in the SWSamples directory. The last page of the sample document includes a link to the Beamer documentation where technical details for using Beamer can be found. Last revised 08/13/09.
Contents :
It should be noted that a full installation mode of LaTeX includes Beamer. If it is not the case, follow this post!To create presentations in LaTeX, the user needs to install the latest version of Beamer, PGF, and xcolor packages. Let’s start by the first operating system!
1. Installing Beamer on Windows
– TeXLive
If you have already installed the latest version of TeXLive under full installation mode, then the beamer class is included by default. For older TeXLive versions, the tlmgr tool can be used to install the missing beamer, pgf and xcolor packages.
– MikTeX
To use the beamer class in MikTeX, the user needs to install the three packages using the package manager in MikTeX Console. The next illustration shows how one can install beamer package on Windows using MikteX Console. Similarly, PGF and Xcolor packages can be installed.
Once these are installed successfully, do not forget to refresh the file name database (FNDB) so that TeX identifies the new files in the directory. FNDB can be refreshed under the tasks menu option in MikTeX Console (Tasks>Refresh file name database), Check below!2. Installing Beamer on Linux
Installing the beamer class in Ubuntu is reasonably straightforward. Run the command aptitude install latex-beamer. If the packages do not exist by default, then the automatic installation of the required packages will start. The following packages will get lodged in the local directory: latex-beamer, pgf, and xcolor.
3. Installing Beamer on Mac
To run the beamer class in MacTeX, we need to have UMBC themes. However, LaTeX doesn’t ship these things along with it, and the user needs to download and install them separately. The process of installation as described by the
read.me file:
- UMBC theme collection can be downloaded from beamer-umbc.tar.gz
- Unzip the archive file. This will yield a folder named beamer. The user needs to rename this folder as UMBC.
- Next, choose to Go to Folder under the menu choice and type ∼/Library.
- The user will see a folder with the name ’
texmf’ if it already exists. If nothing appears, create a folder with ’texmf’ name. - Inside the
texmffolder, the user shall find a tex folder (if it already exists) or create a new one. - Now, inside the tex folder, another folder named latex should exist, open it ( if it does not exist, create it.)
- Finally, place the UMBC folder inside the latex folder.
- Run
texhashto let TeX read the newly installed files.
Now, we should be able to use the beamer class in MacTeX.
Beamer Install Code
4. Test Your Installation
The first thing that we should do before starting creating LaTeX presentations is to test the installation. To this end, download one of the following generic talks:
and place it in your presentation folder. It should be noted that these files can be found in the following path beamer/doc/solutions/generic-talks. The next step is to run the command pdflatex and check whether the output pdf file looks like the following: