Why am I getting missing packages in Tex

I am trying to install texlive 2012. I am running Ubuntu 12.04. I followed the instructions here: How do I install the latest TeX Live 2012?

but I now get error messages such as "ulem.sty not found". What did I do wrong?

Solution 1:

The answer from Luís might not be for everyone since it requires to download a lot of packages that you might not need.

ulem.sty can actually be found in a much smaller package (3 MiB instead of 1 000 MiB), namely texlive-generic-recommended:

sudo apt-get install texlive-generic-recommended

For Ubuntu 20.04

sudo apt-get install texlive-plain-generic

(as mentioned by rmobis in the comments)

Solution 2:

Use the following command sequence:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:texlive-backports/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install texlive-full
        

This will get you the complete TeXLive package constellation. It is over 1 GB of stuff, but you will never worry with missing packages again. Both texlive and texlive-base provide only a subset of packages for the economy of space.