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3. What is the best LaTeX distribution?

Answer

For my thesis I used the teTeX distribution, version 2.0.2.

I ended up with teTeX simply because it was included in Debian, my Linux distribution of choice; so calling it the ‘best’ LaTeX distribution is stretching it a bit — I've never compared it to anything else. Still, I have never regretted this choice either — quite the contrary — and I see no reason not to recommend teTeX wholeheartedly.

Things to watch out for

The current (July 2003) stable release version of Debian only includes teTeX version 1.0. This version has two major disadvantages (from my point of view): it is so old that many of the LaTeX packages included are seriously out of date, and its support for pdflatex has some problems (most of my pictures ended up 90 degrees rotated...). Although I started out with teTeX 1.0 and used it for quite a few years, in the end I had to upgrade my Debian to the ‘unstable’ version in order to be able use teTeX 2.0 and format the thesis to my full satisfaction.

Updates

2 Feb 2008

Development of the teTeX distribution was stopped in 2006. It has since then been superseded by the TeX Live distribution, which is functionally equivalent, at least for the purposes of myu thesis sources, which should compile out of the box with 2007's 10.2 version of TeX Live.