Introduction

This is a guide for installing the latest version of Maxima http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ . Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists, vectors, matrices, and tensors. Maxima yields high precision numeric results by using exact fractions, arbitrary precision integers, and arbitrarily precision floating point numbers. Maxima can plot functions and data in two and three dimensions.

this tutorial requires:

1. an Internet connection (or an Ubuntu DVD + the latest Maxima)

2. basic knowledge of how to open and use a terminal

3. a web browser

Out with the old, Download, Configure, Make, and Install it

If you have an older version of Maxima installed remove it as the package "maxima-doc" must be uninstalled for this method to work,

Let the variable "latest-version" equal the latest version of Maxima (as of 3-20-007 it is 5.11.0)

In a web browser

download the package maxima-"latest-version".tar.gz by going to here, http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4933

and clicking on maxima-"latest-version".tar.gz

In a terminal

sudo apt-get remove maxima maxima-doc wxmaxima 

You will need the virtual package "build-essential" for making the package and the package "checkinstall" for building a debian package. So if you don't have it or are unsure,

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall

Now its time to extract, configure, make and install your package:

tar xfvz /"locationof"/maxima-"latest-version".tar.gz
sudo apt-get build-dep maxima
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gcl

select "yes" and enable ansi which is disabled by default.

cd maxima-"latest-version"/
./configure --prefix=/usr/share --exec-prefix=/usr
make
sudo checkinstall

say "yes" to create a document package and paste the description of Maxima off of the website pasted bellow:

Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists, vectors, matrices, and tensors. Maxima yields high precision numeric results by using exact fractions, arbitrary precision integers, and arbitrarily precision floating point numbers. Maxima can plot functions and data in two and three dimensions.

When this is done type "0" then "ENTER" and enter your email address so that people know who you are if they use your package you@somewhere as an example

hit "ENTER" and hope for the best. Checkinstall attempts to build you a deb package which it automatically installs by default and is also included in the directory you made Maxima, i.e. the deb is in /"locationof"/maxima-"latest-version"/. Thus if everything goes smoothly you now have the latest version of maxima installed.

If you get stuck my email address is yigal.weinstein@gmail.com

On wxMaxima

If you want wxMaxima following the instructions found here, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/wxMaxima . There are dependency issues that require that "maxima-doc" be installed for the package "wxmaxima", however "maxima-doc" must be uninstalled in order for this method above to work for installing Maxima.

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