Introduction
You can get the latest version of WxMaxima in two ways:
I. Download and install the latest WxMaxima package
II. Compile your own WxMaxima package
I. Downloading and Installing The Latest WxMaxima Package
Istvan Blahota has compiled deb packages for WxMaxima 0.8.4-1. They can be downloaded from: http://zeus.nyf.hu/~blahota/maxima/karmic/
There you will find both i386 and amd64 packages. Download the package which corresponds to the architecture of your Ubuntu installation. Double click the downloaded deb package to install it.
WxMaxima 0.8.4 may not display Greek characters as output by default.
1. In order to obtain this functionality click on http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/download/jsMath-fonts.html. There you will find the following zip file: TeX-fonts-25.zip. Download it to your Desktop and unzip it to obtain the folder: TeX-fonts-25. Open this folder to confirm that it has six ttf fonts.
2. Go to your home folder. Create a folder called .fonts. In case you had already created it, you can view it by pressing CTRL+H (i.e CTRL and H simultaneously).
3. Copy the six fonts from the TeX-fonts-25 folder to the .fonts folder. Restart WxMaxima, in case it was open.
4. Greek characters will now be available as output.
II. Compiling Your Own WxMaxima Package
This is a "how to" for installing the latest version of wxMaxima from source for all flavor of Ubuntu.
http://wxmaxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page . wxMaxima is a cross platform GUI for the computer algebra system maxima based on wxWidgets.
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
Download, Configure, Make, and Install it
So first this variable: "latest-version" is the latest version of wxMaxima (as of 3-20-007 it is 0.7.1-1)
In a web browser
download the package wxmaxima-"latest-version".tar.gz by going to here, http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=126731 and clicking on wxmaxima-"latest-version".tar.gz
In a terminal
First out with the old,
sudo apt-get remove 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"/wxMaxima-"latest-version".tar.gz sudo apt-get build-dep wxmaxima cd /"locationof"/wxMaxima-"latest-version"/ ./configure --enable-dnd --enable-printing --enable-unicode-glyphs --prefix=/usr --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:
wxMaxima is a cross platform GUI for the computer algebra system maxima based on wxWidgets.
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 WxMaxima, i.e. the deb is in /"locationof"/WxMaxima-"latest-version"/. Thus if everything goes smoothly you now have the latest version of wxmaxima installed.
If you get stuck my email address is yigal.weinstein@gmail.com
Here is my deb but be warned I am using Feisty Herd-5 when I compiled this. wxmaxima_0.7.1-1_i386.deb
Here's another deb for Dapper (compiled 28-04-2007), works fine on my PC: wxmaxima_0.7.1-1_i386_dapper.deb