[Blindmath] Linux

[Michael Whapples]

Jason, your point about using something like debian is a very good point 
and that is precisely why I moved to debian. I did like slackware but I 
found I was doing too much in maintaining the system, apt really helps 
reduce that work.

As for other things relating to what distribution to use, I won't go 
there today as everyone has their favorite which they must defend, 
personally I never could recommend ubuntu now.

Michael Whapples
On 05/01/10 04:18, Jason White wrote:
> Lloyd Rasmussen<lras at loc.gov>  wrote:
>    
>> You will get a number of Linux proponents on this e-mail list.  It
>> takes considerable effort to set up and learn to use, but it may be
>> worth it, depending on the direction your studies take.
>>      
> It isn't difficult to set up, and the amount of learning involved depends on
> your background. For example, if you've used a version of Unix previously,
> even if only as a user rather than as an administrator, Linux will be fairly
> easy to adapt to. People coming from Microsoft Windows who have never used any
> other operating system tend to find it considerably harder, however, perhaps
> in part because they think their Windows knowledge will transfer to a somewhat
> different software environment, which it apparently doesn't.
>
> I agree with the observation that if you are interested in mathematics,
> computer science or other technical disciplines, there is a wealth of software
> available under Linux, much of which is accessible from the shell prompt. For
> this purpose, I would recommend installing Debian or Ubuntu or a Linux
> distribution derived from one of these, since the number of
> mathematics-related packages available for these distributions will
> considerably ease the task of installing and maintaining the software. You
> don't want to have to spend unnecessary time compiling software from source
> code and installing it when this can be avoided by obtaining a pre-packaged
> version for which the installation is completely automated.
>
> A recent addition to the available mathematics packages which has been
> discussed on other mailing list is Sagemath, which combines a number of tools
> into a single environment.
>
> I don't know how accessible it is, however, although it is reputed to have a
> shell-based user interface as well as one that requires a Web browser.
>
>
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