I've been using git personally for about a year now and have finally reached the point where I am ready to get the rest of my group to adopt it for our work. The tool I am recommending to help with the early git learning curve is Easy Git, http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/. Easy Git (eg) is a very thin wrapper around git. It provides clear and suggestions for git usage. Unlike other porcelains, you can trivially switch between eg and git at any time.
I think Easy Git can improve the initial git experience for many potential git users.
I lead the Maxima project, http://maxima.sourceforge.net/. Maxima is a full-featured GPL'd computer algebra system under active development. We don't hear much from people who want to use Maxima for high school mathematics, but we would welcome the input.
0) Install any one of several possible Lisps (GCL, CMUCL, Clisp and SBCL among other possibilities).
1)./configure
2) make
3) make install
In what way is that more difficult to build than any other piece of free software? We also provide rpm's and an installer for Windows. Several other distributions contain their own Maxima packages.
Disclaimer: I am the Maxima Project leader. I also wrote the build system.
I will not argue that Maxima is currently ready to challenge Mathematica. We are working on it, however. What about Maxima doesn't "cut it" for you? The more we know about what users want the more likely we are to meet their needs in the future.
The "maxima community," such as it is, exists on the maxima mailing list. Please follow the links from http://maxima.sf.net for list information, archives, etc.
The utexas.edu site for Maxima is out of date. The new Maxima site is
http://maxima.sourceforge.net. The new site has the recently released Maxima 5.9.0.
We are trying to get the old site to direct people to the new site. Since the old site is not under our direct control, it isn't as easy as one would hope.
(I am the Maxima project leader.)
There is really only one major symbolic algebra package that is available under a free, as in libre, license: Maxima. Maxima is a GPL'd version of Macsyma, the oldest living symbolic algebra package. Maxima isn't very well publicized, but it has a web page: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima.html
The maxima package contains extensive documentation, but it is short on introductory material. The user interface is pretty grim, but all the guts (i.e., the hard parts) are there.
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I've been using git personally for about a year now and have finally reached the point where I am ready to get the rest of my group to adopt it for our work. The tool I am recommending to help with the early git learning curve is Easy Git, http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/. Easy Git (eg) is a very thin wrapper around git. It provides clear and suggestions for git usage. Unlike other porcelains, you can trivially switch between eg and git at any time. I think Easy Git can improve the initial git experience for many potential git users.
I lead the Maxima project, http://maxima.sourceforge.net/. Maxima is a full-featured GPL'd computer algebra system under active development. We don't hear much from people who want to use Maxima for high school mathematics, but we would welcome the input.
Here are the steps for building Maxima:
./configure
0) Install any one of several possible Lisps (GCL, CMUCL, Clisp and SBCL among other possibilities).
1)
2) make
3) make install
In what way is that more difficult to build than any other piece of free software? We also provide rpm's and an installer for Windows. Several other distributions contain their own Maxima packages.
Disclaimer: I am the Maxima Project leader. I also wrote the build system.
I will not argue that Maxima is currently ready to challenge Mathematica. We are working on it, however. What about Maxima doesn't "cut it" for you? The more we know about what users want the more likely we are to meet their needs in the future.
The "maxima community," such as it is, exists on the maxima mailing list. Please follow the links from http://maxima.sf.net for list information, archives, etc.
We are trying to get the old site to direct people to the new site. Since the old site is not under our direct control, it isn't as easy as one would hope. (I am the Maxima project leader.)
Maxima is a GPL'd symoblic algebra system.
There is really only one major symbolic algebra package that is available under a free, as in libre, license: Maxima. Maxima is a GPL'd version of Macsyma, the oldest living symbolic algebra package. Maxima isn't very well publicized, but it has a web page: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima.html
The maxima package contains extensive documentation, but it is short on introductory material. The user interface is pretty grim, but all the guts (i.e., the hard parts) are there.