[tex-live] texlive, linux and emacs

[Karl Berry]

Hi Martin,

    Should I make links of all texlive executables to /usr/loca/bin ?

I don't recommend it; the exact list of executables changes every year.

    Or should I change change some other general files?

I expect you already know this, but the basic idea is to add
/opt/tex/bin/i386-linux to your PATH, in your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc or
some such initialization file.  (Which one depends on your shell -- do
you use bash?  What does echo $SHELL say?)

In any case, if you do 
  echo $PATH
in your terminal, what does it show?  I'm puzzled as to how it can be
found in the terminal and not by Emacs.

Maybe you have PATH set in your .profile or .bash_login, but not
.bashrc?  In this case, your .bashrc could read .profile (or
whatever), as in:
. $HOME/.profile

Another possibility: did you log out and log in again?

I have never used Ubuntu, but I expect you can change the path
systemwide by editing /etc/profile or /etc/bashrc or some such.  This
shouldn't be necessary though.  I suspect it's all about your personal
startup files.

Hope this gives you a couple clues, anyway ...

karl