Cannot run Windows version of Maxima without sse2 instructions
Subject: Cannot run Windows version of Maxima without sse2 instructions
From: Stefano Ferri
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:44:19 +0200
Recently on this mailing list there was a post about the impossibility to
run the Windows version of Maxima with a processor that has not the support
for sse2 instructions. There was also a more
detalied discussion between developers some months ago about this.
Well, I just encountered this problem with my home pc (it is quite old, but
not so much, it is 5 years old), wich is sempron and windows-based, and
Maxima doesn't work for this problem. Maxima.bat complains about the lack of
sse2 instructions.
Quite frankly, I thik this is unacceptable. There are really a lot of users
that will be excluded from using the latest version of Maxima for this
requirements. Even though ccl can be better for some reasons, this is, I
think, a problem to think about.
Of course, I can use Maxima on my notebook or use an earlier version, but
why? Pretty all kinds of softwares can be run on old pcs, and above all free
software care about this, I think that the exclusion of pcs (and users)
without sse2 instructions is a too high price to pay for a better lisp.
I don't want to seem unkind, but please think about this... I don't see a
valid reason for the use of ccl, if it has such a limitation.
Stefano