Important: A fixed version of maxima is now in dapper-updates, so there is no reason to use the instructions on this page.
Old, deprecated instructions
wxMaxima is a GUI front end for the Maxima computer algebra system (CAS). In Ubuntu 6.06, wxMaxima doesn't work. Maxima alone works, and there doesn't seem to be a problem with wxMaxima itself, but all commands fail because the socket that communicates with Maxima always dies. The workaround is to recompile Maxima with a different Lisp implementation. The bug has been [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/wxmaxima/+bug/43150 filed] already.
First, you need to install CMU Common Lisp, because this Lisp will not cause the problem. Also install wxWidgets so you can build wxMaxima later.
sudo apt-get install cmucl libwxgtk2.6-dev
Hopefully, you will not need anything else (other than build-essential and other basic packages like that) to build Maxima and wxMaxima. If you find that you do, please update this page.
Next, download [http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ Maxima] and [http://wxmaxima.sourceforge.net/ wxMaxima]. Untar them and do the standard build procedure. Maxima needs the --enable-cmucl option.
tar zxvf maxima*.tar.gz cd maxima<TAB> ./configure --enable-cmucl && make sudo checkinstall
tar zxvf wxMaxima*.tar.gz cd wxMaxima<TAB> ./configure && make sudo checkinstall
You may want to disable both wxMaxima and Maxima from apt. Put the following in your /etc/apt/preferences file.
Package: wxmaxima Pin: version 0.6.4 Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: maxima Pin: version 5.9.2 Pin-Priority: 1000
Your wxMaxima should work now. If you still have unresolved dependencies, then you should find out what they are by trying to install wxMaxima from the repositories, and install all of the extra packages, but not wxMaxima or Maxima.
sudo apt-get -s install wxmaxima
Please help others by modifying this page to list all of the extra packages you needed to install to get it working.