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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]
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(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))