Any maths or science fans using Solaris? (related to Mathematica on Solaris)
- From: Dave <foo@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:14:11 +0100
I posted this on some OpenSolaris newsgroups, but since a lot of people might not read them, I thought I'd stick it here too.
Some of you might know of the program 'Mathematica' from Wolfram Research.
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
If you are interested in computing things like the factorial of 100000! exactly using integers, or solving integrals etc, it might be of interest. (It is very much a niche product).
Mathematica has been a very expensive bit of software which runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris (both SPARC and x86). The Windows, Linux and OS X versions are $2495 in the USA, (£2035 in the UK) The Solaris versions are even more expensive than the other systems ($3120 in the USA, £2545 in the UK).
Anyway, Wolfram Research have just released a 'home' version of Mathematica
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematicahomeedition/
which retails at $295 in the US and £195 in the UK, which is around 10% of the usual cost. It's supposed to be the same product - just the license conditions don't allow professional use. There is an even cheaper version available for students, but they have to be registered at a uni or similar.
The problem is, the 'home' edition is not available on Solaris (either SPARC or x86), but only on Windows, Linux or OS X. The same is true of the student versions.
Now I know there are lots of people running Solaris at home, and some of you which might be interested in a cheapish copy of Mathematica.
If so, I suggest you ask Wolfram Research to make a copy available for Solaris. If enough people badger them, they might do it.
When at uni, the site license we had allowed Mathematica to be at home by staff. When I asked for a SPARC license, this was initially declined, since "A Sun is not a home computer". After pointing out that people did use Suns at homes, Wolfram Research granted me a license for my SPARC at home.
You can badger Wolfram Research at
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/sales.cgi
Or http://www.wolfram.com/company/contact.cgi
shows some possibly useful email addresses.
General Inquiries
Send general questions regarding Wolfram Research and our products to info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Suggestions
Suggestions about our products are welcome at suggestions@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Obviously for companies to port products to Solaris, it takes some effort. But when the program already runs on Solaris, it seems crazy for them to not make it available for Solaris users.
PS
The Solaris x86 version of Mathematica is only supported on AMD, not Intel CPUs, but it is possible to get around this, by replacing a couple of the libraries supplied with Mathematica with Sun versions which come as part of Sun Studio 12. But as I say, you can't get the x86 or SPARC versions for home or student use.
--
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