There is a recent development that provides a much smaller subset: TinyTex by Yihui Xie (who has made many contributions to Rmarkdown). See https://yihui.name/t

There is a recent development that provides a much smaller subset: TinyTex by Yihui Xie (who has made many contributions to Rmarkdown). See https://yihui.name/tinytex/ https://yihui.name/tinytex/ One can add just the packages you need and it can be installed in user directories for people who do not have admin privleges.