Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Raspberry Pi fans up in arms as Mathematica disappears from Raspbian downloads
Knickers have become ever so twisty over the last few days as fans of the diminutive Raspberry Pi computer and its Raspbian operating system noted that Mathematica had been "removed".
The conspiracy theories kicked off when users noted two simple words in the release notes for the latest and greatest version of Raspbian: * Removed Mathematica.
Discussions soon popped up on the Raspberry Pi Foundation's own forums and elsewhere as to what the exclusion might mean.
The leading theory was that the contract that allowed the Foundation to bundle the pricey system for free for the education-orientated Pi had expired. Mathematica Desktop for Students, after all, starts at £105 (plus taxes), so getting it for free made the Pi somewhat of a steal.
A Raspberry Pi engineer confirmed the expiration theory in a forum posting, stating: "The contract was for five years and has expired."
However, Wolfram Research contradicted this yesterday with a tweet confirming that Mathematica would indeed continue to be available on the Pi and even gave some handy commands to download the thing.
[...] El Reg additionally got in touch with the Raspberry Pi Foundation and were told by its head honcho, Eben Upton, that the issue was also one of download size (as observed by several forum posters). Upton observed that removing Mathematica "takes a chunk of size out of the most commonly downloaded image (it's never been present in the 'lite' image, but this also lacks the desktop and various other bits)".
However, with not a little bit of understatement, he added: "That said, there's been lots of grumbling, so we might end up putting it back."
Going forwards, Mathematica could well end up being installed on physical media (such as SD cards) but left as an option for downloads.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:56PM (6 children)
Your open source alternative
https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ [gnu.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:07PM
Octave is a good substitute for Matlab, not so great a replacement for Mathimatica.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:21PM (4 children)
I'm looking at the Octave docs.
Looks useful, but like matlab highly oriented towards matrices and linear algebra. But not a CAS. (eg, Computer Algebra System) [wikipedia.org] If Octave is this, and I'm just missing it, I would be happy to be correctly informed.
Some people might be using Mathematica as a CAS. Factor this polynomial. Multiply these two polynomials and give me the simplified expansion. Simplify this expression. Solve this equation for X. Now rearrange and solve it for Y. Give me the derivative of this expression with respect to oranges.
One alternative is Maxima [sourceforge.net] or WxMaxima [github.io].
Computer Algebra Systems [wpi.edu]
Other Free Computer Algebra Systems [sourceforge.net]
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 17 2018, @07:26PM (2 children)
my kids use wolfram alpha to do their algebra homework, although its capable of a lot more, its web based and free as in beer (not free as in freedom)
https://www.wolframalpha.com [wolframalpha.com]
Feed it something like x**2/(1+x**3) and view pages of fun as a response.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:22PM (1 child)
Do they at learn how to do the problems with the computer doing the work for them? Not that it matters much for algebra, because it's all easy memorizing a few basic equations and everything else can be derived from those on the spot. I got really low grades in algebra in school though, I took it 3 times because I kept getting failed for not showing work, even though I took my tests with no calculator right in front of the teacher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:50AM
Probably missed the part that said "show all your working".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday October 17 2018, @07:45PM
I'll take the opportunity to plug SageMath [sagemath.org] and also their SageMathCell [sagemath.org] a remote free server running your content of a single "cell" (which can contain much more than a single calculation or a single command). SageMathCell is very nice for a quick share (here's a silly example I made [sagemath.org]), requires one JavaScript allowance) and they have other options as well.
SageMath includes Maxima and more.
I don't know how it compares in detail but it's meant to do everything Mathematica does.
From the SageMath front page:
I only dabble but for what little that is worth (essentially nothing) I like it. I did a compile a month or two ago, a process which might not be for everybody (including me lol my computer is a potato), I guess most people do the custom ISO thing on a thumbdrive. There's a lot I haven't learnt about using it properly, almost everything in fact since I haven't had time to RTFM.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 17 2018, @05:24PM (5 children)
...so it's something you can download and install for free later if you choose to do so? Exactly as it should have been from the beginning? What exactly is the problem here? This is an image designed to fit on a four gig SD card "hard drive". It is not designed for desktop PCs with terrabyte drives. It does not need to have every goddamn thing anybody might want to use preinstalled. Maybe now I'll actually have enough room to install my own software without having uninstall a bunch of this stuff first...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:32PM (4 children)
Yes but you're an evil master hacker and not a poor defaults-only kinda normie!
/s
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday October 17 2018, @07:48PM (1 child)
We "need" a new moderation option of +1 Hug :D (not sarcasm).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2, Disagree) by fyngyrz on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:51PM
Good luck with any moderation ideas, serious or otherwise. As with Slashdot, much could be done to improve the moderation system here, but the powers-that-be have dug in rather firmly. Even using "Disagree" has been described by no less a site luminary than the The mighty Buzzard as "using the system wrong [soylentnews.org]."
He is, of course, very wrong, but as he writes the code, there's no coming back from his not being willing to change his mind on the matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:18AM (1 child)
Well, a person fiddling with Raspberry PI is not someone I would call "defaults-only kinda normie"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:56PM
I think that's rather debatable, depending on whose marketing you're looking at. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is still largely pushing these things as an educational device, which is exactly why they include all of this software in the first place. And pretty much by definition, if it's being used to educate people about computers, software, and electronics, then the user probably doesn't know much about those topics.
Of course, if you look at hobbyist retailers who tend to categorize the thing as a dev kit, then yes the expected user probably has some clue what they're doing with it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:26PM (4 children)
I can predict that there will eventually be a problem whenever you bundle some free (as in pr0n) software that is not Free (as in speech). Or worse, like Windows 10, free (as in herpes).
Essentially free Mathematica is a limited trial. Even if not time limited. Limited in other ways. An advertisement to buy a commercial product. The first hit is free. Become dependent on it for free. Then hooked. This kind of software is about as bad as all the crapware bundled with Windows PCs in that sense.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:23PM (2 children)
Well duh.
This makes it sound all doom, manipulative, evil capitalist twisting mustaches when planning on plotting on how to foreclose on the orphanage. But think about what the alternative is.
"You need to spend $335 [wolfram.com] to buy software, untested and sight unseen. Hopefully it works on your computer."
Is that really a better world to live in? Do we really want to pillory companies for offering software demos? They aren't even force-bundling it into the original image. So what is the complaint here? (Well, except for the "they used to give this to me for free, why should I pay for it" regular complaint people have when they want something for nothing... which we all do, of course.)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 18 2018, @01:21PM
It is not a complaint against Wolfram. It is a complaint about the decision to bundle it in earlier Raspbian images. Or not to have had alternative images without it.
I understand that the Pi is education focused. So I can understand why. But it is a simple fact of reality that there is a huge audience of Pi users who use Pi boards in a very different way. So maybe something in between the full blown Raspbian and the Lite version without GUI.
And maybe not quite a complaint but more of an observation and caution to always be suspicious of having this kind of thing included for free. Unlike open source, it is available at the pleasure of the company who makes it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday October 18 2018, @01:30PM
If someone were offering free cigarettes on the street corner would you defend it with the same logic?
Consider that Torvalds created Linux because he wanted a Unix-like environment at home and the commercial Unixes were too expensive, so he made his own. Had he been offered a free non-commercial home trial version of some mainstream Unix, would we have Linux today? Probably not. Would we have all of the software that has since been built around Linux? I expect that such a trial version would have destroyed a lot which many of us here at Soylent cherish.
They aren't giving this stuff away for free just to be nice, they're giving it away for free to get people hooked. It's just a marketing tactic, no better than the auto-play video ads they cram on every website they can. And it trains people to accept proprietary software, to accept that you don't have a right to control what is done on your own computer. That you might "buy" the computer, but the person who actually owns it is the software producer.
And, considering TFA here, it looks like it worked.
The purpose of a Raspberry Pi is to teach people to program, and to build circuits, and to learn to control their computing devices. The purpose of proprietary software is to teach people that they can't do any of those things unless they're part of a major software corporation. These are not compatible missions. A free trial doesn't change that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:53AM
> I can predict that there will eventually be a problem whenever you bundle some free (as in pr0n) software that is not Free (as in speech). Or worse, like Windows 10, free (as in herpes).
Expect more of that digital herpes as Microsofters continue to stream into the Foundation and infect their projects. Don't think that the Raspberry Pi has escaped the baleful eye of Redmond just because it is useful or small. They have been working quietly but hard to undermine and destroy the project. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is in a little better position than the OLPC was but the leaders are no less ignorant of Microsoft tactics and goals.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:21PM (2 children)
All these open source math packages are great. But. Remember, this is a PI we're talking about. You can't just build the sources on your PC and load them on the Pi. You'll need either a cross development environment on the PC (doable, but takes a lot of knowledge about what your doing. Or you can install the toolchain on your Pi and build it there. Again, not a trivial task.
Of course, all it takes is 1 person to build it for a Pi then do, I dunno, apt-put? the package for everyone to download.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by NateMich on Thursday October 18 2018, @01:44AM
Why's that? That's what I did when I was first playing around with a Pi.
Later I just installed Gentoo on the Pi.
I hated Raspbian anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:00AM
Pretty sure Wolfram isn't going to let you even *see* the source.
But, if you aren't using a broken OS, setting up a cross build environment should be pretty easy. A basic armhf cross build environment is as simple to setup on Debian Stretch and above as:
apt-get install crossbuild-essential-armhf
(prior versions required adding an additional repository)
You will want other stuff, but it is as easy to install as on native.
Debian's multiarch system lets you add any foreign architectures as you need to be able to install libs you may need.
dpkg --add-architecture armhf
And, installing all build deps to build something already packaged by Debian is as simple as:
apt-get build-dep -a armhf packagename
And, pretty much anything you might need for your cross build environment as a binary is in the repos (e.g., objective C, Fortran, Ada, etc. compilers. For instance, 57 binary packages for cross build environments targeting armhf:
apt-cache search cross | grep arm | wc -l
57
For stuff that uses autoconf* (anything where you ./configure before make), you will want to install qemu-user (probably the static build), and setup binfmt to auto execute your foreign arch binaries under qemu-user. Again. easy on a sane OS:
apt-get install qemu-user-binfmt qemu-user-static
Above used armhf as an example, but armel, arm64, mips, ppc, etc. all work the same way.
*autoconf often builds test code bits and then tries to execute them to test build environment support for X feature. These need to be able to execute as the target arch. The above setup with qemu will handle running this and any other foreign arch binaries automatically under qemu-- just works.