Installing the Type 1 versions of the CM fonts
This is a specialised case of installing a font,
but it is almost never necessary — it's inconceivable that any (even
remotely) recent system will not have the fonts already installed.
You can confirm this (near-inevitable) fact by trying the fonts.
On a system that uses dvips
(almost all do), try the sequence:
latex sample2e
dvips -o sample2e.ps sample2e
at a “command prompt” (shell
in a Unix-style system,
“DOS box” in a Windows system).
If the command works at all, the console output of the command will
include a sequence of Type(nbsp)1 font file names, listed as
<path/cmr10.pfb>
and so on; this is dvips
telling you
it's copying information from the Type(nbsp)1 font, and you
need do no more.
If the test has failed, you need to install your own set of the fonts; the distribution (including all the fonts the AMS designed and produced themselves) is now described as amsfonts. The bundle contains metric and map files — all you need to install the fonts.