rmarkdown: pandoc: pdflatex not found

Question

When I use the render{rmarkdown} to produce pdf file from .Rmd file on my Mac, an error message says

pandoc: pdflatex not found. pdflatex is needed for pdf output.

Answer 1

For people that get stranded here because the same error is showing up in their Linux distribution. Get pdflatex in e.g. Ubuntu by installing

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra

its too much software, but needed for example by knitr (rmarkdown-pdf-compilation)