Maxima is an open source, multiplatform and free command-line software that has been designed as a complete CAS (Computer Algebra System) utility oriented towards symbolic computation and allows you to easily plot data and functions in 2D and 3D.
Being a direct descendant of Macsyma, the legendary computer algebra system developed in the late 60’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Maxima features a system for the manipulation of both numerical and symbolic expressions, including integration, differentiation, Taylor series, ordinary differential equations, etc.
Command-line options
With Maxima, you can process Maxima and Lisp files or Maxima commands in batch mode, view the software’s internal directory information, disable readline support, enable underlying Lisp debugger, use a specific folder for user directory, view the default installed version of Maxima, add Lisp options, and use a specific Lisp implementation.
In addition, you can set the name of the Lisp and Maxima initialization files, list the installed Lisp or version combinations, preload a Lisp file, suppress Maxima commands in interactive mode, connect Maxima to a server on a specific port, use a specific Maxima version, view Lisp invocation in Maxima wrapper script, as well as to suppress Maxima start-up message and expression labels.
The Xmaxima graphical user interface
Besides the command-line user interface, a GUI (Graphical User Interface) written in Tk, called Xmaxima, is also available for download on this page and allows you to easily access all of Maxima’s functionality from the comfort of your GNU/Linux desktop.
Under the hood and supported operating systems
Maxima is a cross-platform application that has been successfully tested on a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions, as well as on the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. It is written in the Common Lisp and C programming languages, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms.
