Introduction

"Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL. It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface."

"Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."

Website: http://www.sagemath.org/

Installation Instructions

Some versions of ubuntu hosted versions of Sage in the repositories, but they were soon outdated by the quick pace of change of Sage, and now Sage cannot be found in the repositories any more.

Download binaries from their website

Go to the website

• http://sagemath.org/download.html

Edit conflict - other version:

and pick up a mirror to download. Choose 'Download for Linux', then

• choose your architecture (32 or 64 bit),
• then choose the 'lzma' package with the word Ubuntu and your Ubuntu version in the name.

For example, for a 32-bit processor running Ubuntu 10.4, you'd select sage-4.4.4-linux-32bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-i686-Linux.tar.lzma where 4.4.4 is the latest Sage version at the time of writing.

Edit conflict - your version:

and pick up a mirror to download. Choose 'Download for Linux', then

• choose your architecture (32 or 64 bit),
• then choose the 'lzma' package with the word Ubuntu and your Ubuntu version in the name.

For example, for a 32-bit processor running Ubuntu 10.4, you'd select sage-4.4.4-linux-32bit-ubuntu_10.04_lts-i686-Linux.tar.lzma where 4.4.4 is the latest Sage version at the time of writing.

End of edit conflict

Installing reduces to unpacking into /opt, and putting a link to the sage executable in /usr/local/bin:

sudo su
cd /opt
tar --lzma -xvf /path_to_sage_package/sage-?.?.?-linux-ubuntu-...lzma
ln -s /opt/sage.?-?-?.../sage /usr/local/bin/sage
sage

Compile from source

You can compile sage from source. Though it's actually very easy, it may take a long time (1 hour on high end hardware, 14 days on a cell phone).

The first step is to install the required packages:

---- /!\ '''Edit conflict - other version:''' ----
sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install build-essential m4 gfortran

---- /!\ '''Edit conflict - your version:''' ----
sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install build-essential m4 gfortran

---- /!\ '''End of edit conflict''' ----

And you may also need the following for some extra features

sudo apt-get install imagemagick texlive

Then you can compile the code with:

make

You can now use sage from that directory or move it into /opt:

sudo su
cd /opt
cp -r /path_to_sage .
ln -s /opt/sage.?-?-?.../sage /usr/local/bin/sage

You should check their own documentation if you find any trouble: http://sagemath.org/download-source.html

Create an icon in the panel

You can add to the panel an icon for starting the sage server. Just select "add new element to the panel", "add new applet" or however it's called in your system, then choose for a new "Launcher" or "Launcher for external applications".

In the configuration dialog for the launcher, make sure you select "open in a terminal" and choose "sage -notebook" for the command in GNOME or XFCE. In KDE, choose "sage" for the command and "-notebook" for command line options.

You can use "SAGE" for the name and the following for the icon:

/opt/sage-directory.../data/extcode/notebook/images/icon48x48.png

where "sage-directory..." is the directory where you installed sage.

Getting Started With Sage

Open a terminal and type sage and press enter. The sage command line interface should start up. Wait for the sage prompt to come up. It would looks thus:

sage:

This may take up to a minute depending on your hardware.

The first time you use Sage you will be asked to set a password to secure your work.

Choice of Sage Interface: Command Line Or GUI

You have a choice of using Sage either from the command line or from a GUI. The official GUI is called the notebook. In order to use the notebook interface to sage use the sage prompt to type:

notebook()

This will open the Firefox web browser showing the notebook.

To start work with the notebook click on the link New Worksheet.

The rest involves typing your sage commands into the input box and clicking the evaluate button that lies below it.

You might also use the program Cantor or TeXmacs as an interface, though they're not as popular as the notebook:

• http://wiki.sagemath.org/Cantor

• http://wiki.sagemath.org/TeXmacs

Help and Documentation

• Help for sage is available from: http://www.sagemath.org/help.html

A beginner would probably start with the Tutorial at http://www.sagemath.org/doc/tutorial/index.html

Further Reading

At the web page http://www.sagemath.org/help.html you would, by and by, want to look at the Installation Guide and the Reference Manual besides a whole host of documentation at http://www.sagemath.org/doc .

Comments

Hao Wen: 2009-12-01

While Sage is truly a powerful software, it still lacks some key features as of today (Dec. 1, 2009). Good news it is under development.

Plotting doesn't have a good label function. Axis can not be fine tuned as Matlab.

Pablo Angulo: 2010-06-15

Hao, that's perfectly possible, and it's been so for a long time. Sage uses matplotlib for most graphics and you can even add labels in latex. Feel free to email sage-support for these kind of questions.

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