Some quick notes from my first day with maxima (with a happy
ending).
I run RedHat Linux 7.2 on a late 90's 500 MHz Intel
processor with 1 GB of RAM.
I had a very hard time with trying to install the binaries
via rpm. First, the base maxima rpm failed a dependency on
maxima_exec, which I could not locate. Then the maxima-gcl
rpm failed dependencies on maxima (see the previous
sentence), on gcl or clisp, and on some version of libc. The
problems multiplied with complaints from other rpm's, e.g.,
gcl, about old versions of emacs, etc., etc. I think that
this was my worst rpm experience, and I have had some bad
ones.
So then I compiled from the source tarball and, presto,
maxima was up an running in about 15 minutes. I am curious
if other users have had this experience.
Maxima is really impressive and I plan to use it with
graduate students soon.
Michael Ash, Assistant Professor
of Economics and Public Policy
Department of Economics and CPPA
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Tel 413-545-6329 Fax 413-545-2921
Email mash@econs.umass.edu
http://people.umass.edu/maash