LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is often used for scientific and technical papers. The idea behind LaTeX is that the author should concentrate on the content and the document designer should concentrate on the appearance of document. This separation of concerns is similar to HTML (containing the content) and CSS (the style to apply to the document).
One way:
latex <"main" filename, optionally without .tex extension>
Creates a dvi file with same name as .tex file.
This approach requires less disk space and is faster. However, dvi is an older file format and not portable.
To view a dvi file, use xdvi.
Another approach:
pdflatex <"main" filename, optionally without .tex extension>
Creates a pdf file with the same name as the .tex file.
This approach is slower and requires more disk space but creates a portable PDF document.
For either approach, to add bibtex to the document, run
bibtex <"main" filename, without .tex extension>
Instead of using a text editor and commands to generate your document, you may prefer an IDE.