TeX Live is a large distribution of LaTeX. BasicTeX is a subset of TeX Live for users who do not want to download the full TeX Live. Is there any equivalent of BasicTeX in Ubuntu?
TeX Live is divided into several packages in Ubuntu. If you don't want the whole thing (and indeed most users don't need the whole thing), install texlive-base, which is similar in size to BasicTeX. You may want to install texlive-latex-recommended and texlive-fonts-recommended as well as support for the language(s) you write in (texlive-lang-…).
TeX Live is divided into several packages in Ubuntu. If you don't want the whole thing (and indeed most users don't need the whole thing), install texlive-base
, which is similar in size to BasicTeX. You may want to install texlive-latex-recommended 
and texlive-fonts-recommended 
as well as support for the language(s) you write in (texlive-lang-…).