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Installation

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If there can be a frustration for both new users of Maxima and current users it is installation. For typical users, this does not need to be the case. This section is devoted to providing the simplest installation path possible for computers with three operating systems (MS Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without getting bogged down by technical details or atypical requirements.

There are in general two installation options that will be of interest to most users of Maxima:

  • Installation of Maxima alone
  • Installation of the wxMaxima GUI including Maxima

Installation of Maxima Alone for Linux, MS Windows, and Mac OS

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For Linux users, there are several options for installing Maxima:

  • Maxima may be installed using the software package management system for a Linux distribution. Most distributions provide packages for Maxima in their repositories. These usually are the version which was current, when the distribution was released. So they likely are not the latest version of Maxima. Also, these binaries may not have been compiled with support for Unicode which is something that users may find useful. However, having a more current version of Maxima may not be necessary, and the same applies to Unicode support. So if following the Maxima installation instructions of the links below for Linux are too technical, then the simplest path is to install Maxima may be by using the software package management system for a specific Linux distribution.
  • Maxima can be installed by following the instructions for Linux at the following: Maxima Linux Manual Installation Instructions. Keep in mind that installation using this method, while providing a recent release of Maxima, does not provide for a built-in means of updating when a newer release becomes available. Instructions for updating to a newer release can be found by referring to the information at the end of this section.

For MS Windows and Mac OS, follow the instructions of the following:

Installation of wxMaxima GUI including Maxima for MS Windows and Mac OS

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For MS Windows and Mac OS, follow the instructions for the relevant operating system provided using the following link to the wxMaxima website installation instruction page: wxMaxima Installation Instructions.

Installing wxMaxima by following these instructions will include the installation of Maxima.

Installation of wxMaxima GUI including Maxima for Linux (recommended)

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For Linux there are several options:

  • As noted for Linux, above there is the option of installing wxMaxima including Maxima using the software package management system for your Linux distribution. Most distributions provide binaries for wxMaxima and Maxima in their repositories. These usually are the version which was current, when the distribution was released. So they likely are not the latest version of wxMaxima and Maxima. Also, these Maxima binaries may not have been compiled with support for Unicode which is something that users may find useful. However, having a more current version of wxMaxima and Maxima may not be necessary, and the same applies to Unicode support. So the simplest path may be to install wxMaxima and Maxima using the software package management system for your Linux distribution.
  • The other option which may be the best for most Linux users is to install wxMaxima from FlatHub using flatpak. FlatHub packages generally speaking will be more recent releases of wxMaxima. Some Linux distributions include support for FlatHub flatpak packages. Refer to the following link for specific Linux distributions: FlatHub Linux Distribution Support and Setup. The wxMaxima FlatHub source is available using the following link: wxMaxima FlatHub Installation. Under Add-ons (Adds Maxima) select the Install button to include Maxima with the wxMaxima installation.
  • The second option is to install Maxima using the Installation of Maxima Alone for Linux instructions of the link above, and then install wxMaxima using the software package management system for your Linux distribution. wxMaxima will either autodetect the installed version of Maxima, or the user can provide the path to the desired Maxima executable file using the Configure settings of wxMaxima. This option provides a relatively recent version of Maxima with Unicode support.

Instructions for compiling and installing Maxima and wxMaxima from source code can be found by referring to the links above for Maxima and wxMaxima respectively. This option is technically complex requiring specialized know-how.

Steps to Upgrade or Remove a Manually Installed Version of Maxima

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To Upgrade a Manually Installed Version of Maxima

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Important! Read the following in its entirety before attempting a Maxima version upgrade.

If Maxima was manually installed on a Linux system by following the instructions for Linux at the following link:

Maxima Linux Manual Installation Instructions

then to upgrade a manually installed Maxima version from a binary "tarball" (like maxima-5.49.0-sbcl-glibc2.31.tar.gz for example), to a newer version it is necessary to repeat the same installation instructions of this link using the downloaded tarball for the newer version, as there is no built-in upgrade mechanism for this sort of binary tarball manual installation.

Note: Since the installation is manual, always ensure compatibility with the system glibc version (by checking with ldd --version) according to the installation instructions.

By repeating the the installation steps as published using the tarball of the newer Maxima version, files that are common to both versions will be replaced by the same or newer files. Additionally, a new directory will be created for the new Maxima version in the directory /usr/local/share/maxima. A similarly named directory will be created in the directory /usr/local/lib/maxima.

For example, if the tarball is named maxima-5.49.0-sbcl-glibc2.31.tar.gz, then the directories for that version will be /usr/local/share/maxima/5.49.0 and /usr/local/lib/maxima/5.49.0. These two directories contain all the files unique to the 5.49.0 version of Maxima. The /usr/local/share/maxima and /usr/local/lib/maxima directories may contain other directories from previously installed versions.

For example, a previous installation may have created a directory named /usr/local/share/maxima/5.48.1 for the 5.48.1 version of Maxima. Any previous such directories may be removed or retained according to user preferences. It may be best to remove any directories of previous versions before the installation of a newer version.

WARNING! Use caution to prevent deleting unrelated files.

The directories for previous version named 5.48.1 for example can be removed as follows:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/maxima/5.48.1

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/maxima/5.48.1

The version of the new installation can be checked using:

maxima --version

from a terminal shell session.

To Remove Manually All Installed Versions of Maxima

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To remove all manually installed versions of Maxima, delete all files related to Maxima installed in the following directories:

  • /usr/local/bin/
  • /usr/local/share/maxima/
  • /usr/local/lib/maxima/

WARNING! Use caution to prevent deleting unrelated files.

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/maxima

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/rmaxima

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/xmaxima

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/maxima

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/maxima




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