Re: Any maths or science fans using Solaris? (related to Mathematica on Solaris)

Ray Hughes wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:14:11 +0100, Dave wrote:

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.

Have you looked at the OpenSource project Octave ?

Yes. but Octave is *considerably* less capable than Mathematica. It is more of a MATLAB clone.

As a general point though, it seems odd to allow Mathematica Home Edition to be used on every operating *except* Solaris, when the code runs on Solaris. That can't be good for Sun or Solaris. I guess their argument could be "SPARCs are not home computers" but one only has to look on here and find there are lots of hobbyists using Suns at home.

Solaris x86 must be used by lots of home users. Then there must be people who use Suns at home as part of their job, but do maths as a hobby.

Sage seems to be the best free maths software now

http://www.sagemath.org/

which has a mission of "Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."

Sage is based around the Python language, but glues together lots of open-source maths software - a list is at

http://www.sagemath.org/links-components.html

but I thought I'd post it inline, just to give an idea of how comprehensive it is.

* ATLAS: Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software
* BLAS: Basic Fortan 77 linear algebra routines
* Bzip2: High-quality data compressor
* Cddlib: Double Description Method of Motzkin
* Common Lisp: Multiparadigm and general-purpose programming language
* CVXOPT: Convex optimization, linear programming, least squares, etc.
* Cython: C-Extensions for Python
* mwrank: mwrank is a program for computing Mordell-Weil groups of elliptic curves over Q via 2-descent. Since November 2007 mwrank has formed part of the eclib package which is included in Sage.
* F2c: Converts Fortran 77 to C code
* Flint: Fast Library for Number Theory
* FpLLL: Euclidian lattice reduction
* FreeType: A Free, High-Quality, and Portable Font Engine
* G95: Open source Fortran 95 compiler
* GAP: Groups, Algorithms, Programming
* GD: Dynamic graphics generation tool
* Genus2reduction: Curve data computation
* Gfan: Gröbner fans and tropical varieties
* Givaro: C++ library for arithmetic and algebra
* GMP: GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library
* GMP-ECM: Elliptic Curve Method for Integer Factorization
* GNU TLS: Secure networking
* GSL: Gnu Scientific Library
* JsMath: JavaScript implementation of LaTeX
* IML: Integer Matrix Library
* IPython: Interactive Python shell
* LAPACK: Fortan 77 linear algebra library
* Lcalc: L-functions calculator
* Libgcrypt: General purpose cryptographic library
* Libgpg-error: Common error values for GnuPG components
* libpng: Bitmap image support
* Linbox: C++ linear algebra library
* M4RI: Linear Algebra over GF(2)
* Matplotlib: Python plotting library
* Maxima: computer algebra system
* Mercurial: Revision control system
* MoinMoin Wiki
* MPFI: Multiple Precision Floating-point Interval library
* MPFR: C library for multiple-precision floating-point computations with correct rounding
* ECLib:Cremona's Programs for Elliptic curves
* NetworkX: Graph theory
* NTL: Number theory C++ library
* Numpy: Numerical linear algebra
* OpenCDK: Open Crypto Development Kit
* PALP: A Package for Analyzing Lattice Polytopes
* PARI/GP: Number theory calculator
* Pexpect: Pseudo-tty control for Python
* PolyBoRi: Polynomials Over Boolean Rings
* PyCrypto: Python Cryptography Toolkit
* Python: Interpreted language
* Qd: Quad-double/Double-double Computation Package
* R: Statistical Computing
* Readline: Line-editing
* Rpy: Python interface to R
* Scipy: Python library for scientific computation
* Singular: fast commutative and noncommutative algebra
* Scons: Software construction tool
* SQLite: Relation database
* Sympow: L-function calculator
* Symmetrica: Representation theory
* Sympy: Python library for symbolic computation
o mpmath: Mpmath is a pure-Python library for multiprecision floating-point arithmetic.
* Tachyon: lightweight 3d ray tracer
* Termcap: Simplifies the process of writing portable text mode applications
* Twisted: Python networking library
* Weave: Tools for including C/C++ code within Python
* Zlib: Data compression library
* ZODB: Object-oriented database


Last I looked Sage was not running on Solaris, but I've heard it is "real soon now".

Sage has funding from companies including Microsoft, Google. Sun have donated hardware to the project too.

There's an explanation of why Octave is not part of Sage

http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-isnt-sage-just-part-of-octave.html

but there is an interface from Sage to Octave, so one can use Octave within Sage.




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