What are some good Overleaf (Latex) alternatives? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Clandestine@lemmy.zip to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I'm currently writing a report in using Overleaf. As I'm getting the premium version for free through my Uni, I've had no problems so far. Now I'm working in a place with unstable internet and using Overleaf has become very annoying.

Are there some good FOSS alternatives out there, preferably where I can just upload my Project.zip and continue working offline? I have no need to collaborate with anyone or anything like that.

Currently I'm looking at LyX, but I'd be happy to hear about your experiences with that or other programs.

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[-] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This is probably not the solution for most, but if you care, overleaf can be selfhosted.

More info here: https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf

Edit: note->not

[-] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Just FYI, I've done this, and if you're not super familiar with Docker network permissions it can be more than a bit funky, especially if you're on Windows. I'm sure it's trivial for folks who're used to docker, but getting the right ports configured is a bit of a pain.

[-] Retiring@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

Idk when you did it, but with the overleaf toolkit, at least the docker networking seems to be no problem. I had quite some problems with updating though. I run an outdated version at the moment because texlive gets updated faster than overleaf, which produces errors when installing the texlive full package. Overall, also can’t recommend.

[-] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

Oh I got it running eventually. If you were on Linux, it'd be fine, but since on Windows the docker engine runs inside WSL, the ports exposed to a browser in Windows are not the same as what Overleaf is trying to expose in WSL.

[-] Retiring@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

I see, you probably had to change the overleaf config file? I feel it’s too much work to keep it updated and running, on my Linux server. But the official overleaf is just too slow. It struggles to compile 30 page documents, and i have several that are longer. How does it run for you on your windows computer, with the local installation? What are the specs of your machine?

[-] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

LaTeX is just fundamentally not that fast, especially when pulling in lots of packages. I'm running it on a server with a i7-12700K and 64 GB of RAM, but I didn't really notice a slowdown when running it on an old laptop, they're both about the same speed as the official overleaf. With longer or more complex documents, I usually split it into multiple files and edit them on their own, then use \include{} to being them into the final file with proper formatting and the right preamble. Of course, thats using a local MikTeX install, so YMMV.

To be honest, I've always wondered why you can't like "pre-compile" a bunch of packages into a binary and include that to speed things up. I'm sure there are good reasons, I just don't know them.

[-] Retiring@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

You are correct, LaTeX isn’t very fast in general, but my 8 core ryzen server with 8GB of ram assigned to the vm running overleaf is usually twice as fast as the official overleaf unpaid tier. The specs you listed should produce much better results than the official overleaf. This seems weird to me.

As an example, I just compiled my thesis, which is about 60 pages, lots of references, pictures, and generally a heavy document. On my server it takes about 35 seconds, the official overleaf just times out (pay or we won’t compile your document).