Maxima – Downloads

Windows

Download the latest Maxima version, which is currently: 5.47.0-Windows. Modern PCs are usually running a 64-bit version of the operating system, so download the file ending with win64.exe. Older PCs may be running a 32-bit Windows, then download the win32.exe version. Look at: Which Windows operating system am I running? if you are unsure.
Note: The last Windows installer of Maxima, which runs on Windows 7 is 5.45.1.
Note: Windows can also run on ARM CPUs, but one can run unmodified x86 or x64 Windows apps on Arm devices, so Maxima should work there too.
Run that file you downloaded to start the installation process. It might take some time, because the installation program will also install other additional programs separate from Maxima.
Once the installation process ends, look in the directory where you installed Maxima, which will be something similar to: C:\maxima-5.47.0. In that directory you should find a sub-directory named bin, which has the programs that were installed. Before you run any of those programs, make sure your antivirus will not touch the programs there. If you're not sure, make a backup of that directory somewhere. It happens very often that after the first time you run Maxima the antivirus deletes the program considering a virus. The back-up will help you recover the missing files without having to install Maxima again.
You have the three interfaces to Maxima that you will find in the bin directory or the start menu: Command-line Maxima, Xmaxima and Wxmaxima. And check that you get the %i1 prompt and can execute some basic commands.
To make sure Maxima can also launch the two graphic programs it uses, run the following two commands which should create plots:
```
  plot2d (x, [x,0,1]);
  plotdf ([y,-x]);
```

Installation using package managers

Maxima (maybe not the most recent version) is also installable using package managers like winget or Chocolatey.

Macintosh

Currently, the easiest way to install Maxima is using Homebrew. After installing that program, issue the following commands to install Maxima and Xmaxima:

   brew update
   brew install maxima
   brew install tcl-tk

Pay attention to the information given after each of those commands, because in some cases there is a post-installation procedure required. You can also install Wxmaxima (brew install wxmaxima) using the same method.

The Maxima site in Sourceforge also includes some Mac packages for older versions of Maxima in the section Maxima-MacOS and there is a tutorial to install Maxima in Mac OS, but that package is not being maintained for newer versions.

Linux

Using a Linux package

Most Linux distributions include a Maxima package that can be installed with the package manager. Distributions based on .deb packages will automatically install maxima on clicking this link. Be aware that the complete Maxima code might come split into several packages; some functionalities might not work if some of those packages have not been installed.

Manually installing maxima on RPM based systems

The section Maxima-Linux in the Sourceforge repository provides RPM packages created by the Maxima developers. You can chose one of the files named: name-version.i386.rpm, where the first part is the name of each package and the second part are the numbers that identify the version. The minimum set of packages that must be installed are maxima and maxima-exec-clisp. Since they both depend on each other, they should be installed with a single rpm command:

rpm -ivh maxima-x.y.z-n.i386.rpm maxima-exec-clisp-x.y.z-n.i386.rpm

Clisp and Gnuplot should be installed in your system.

You may also want to install maxima-xmaxima, which provides the Xmaxima front-end and one of the graphic engines used by some of Maxima's plotting commands.

The maxima-lang packages provide translations of the manual into various languages, although none of those translations are complete.

Manually installing maxima on debian-based systems

Maxima-Linux Contains .deb files that can be downloaded and manually installed on debian-based systems.

maxima-common contains many files needed in order to run and install the actual maxima binary.
maxima-sbcl provides a maxima binary that was compiled with sbcl. It should be reasonably fast and able to run even on systems with no sbcl installed.
maxima-gcl provides a maxima binary that was compiled with gcl. It might be considerably faster or slower than sbcl, depending on the task.
maxima-ecl provides a maxima binary that was compiled with ecl. Performance-wise it normally ranges between clisp and sbcl.
maxima-clisp provides a maxima binary that was compiled with clisp. It should be extremely memory-efficient and able to run on every system that has a similar clisp to that maxima was compiled with installed.

To be able to run Maxima, both maxima-common and at least one of the above binaries have to be installed. Most systems contain a program that automatically installs .deb packages on double-clicking them. If that isn't the case the following command will install packages:

sudo dpkg -i <packagename>

If dpkg claims that some dependencies aren't fulfilled the required packages an automatic install and download of these can be triggered by issuing the following command:

sudo apt-get -f install

Distribution-independent packages

Maxima is also part of the distribution-independent snap package of wxMaxima. Informations about installing snaps can be found here.

Android

The download instructions and links can be found in the Maxima on Android page.

Source Code

In systems not included in the previous list or if you want to build a more recent Maxima version or with a different Lisp flavor, get the source code from the Maxima-source subsection. Unpack the file and follow the instructions given in file INSTALL, which can also be read on-line.

GIT

The most recent development version of the source code can be downloaded from the GIT repository. That page shows the git command that should be used to obtain a complete copy of the repository. After getting the code, follow the instructions in INSTALL.git.

Nightly builds

For Windows a nightly build can be downloaded from Wolfgang Dautermann's Website that also provides detailed results of compilation and testbench runs on many different lisps. For Ubuntu Linux nightly builds of maxima are provided at launchpad.net.

If the snappy apps infrastructure is installed (Info on installing it manually ishere) the following command installs a distribution-independent, though large nightly build of maxima + wxMaxima on entering the following command:

sudo snap install --edge wxmaxima

Even if there is no guarantee that a nightly build will work, the Maxima team tries to keep its codebase as stable as possible which means that if something is broken in the nightly build which did work in the release this information normally is important for the developers.

Front-ends

The Xmaxima and Imaxima interfaces are part of the Maxima project and they come included with Maxima. The links to download other independent front-ends can be found in the Projects Related to Maxima section.

Downloads