Maxima Portable (beta) Homepage This is a temporary page to host information about the Maxima PortableApp. It will hopefully move to either the Maxima or PortableApps page once it is out of beta. -- Warren D. MacEvoy menu: [about, install, run, use, remove, download];

about:

Application: Maxima
Category: Education
Description: Maxima is a free and open-source computer algebra system. It can do numerical and symbolic mathematics. This is packaged with wxMaxima, creating a convenient user interface to Maxima proper. As a portable app, it can be run directly from a portable storage device without installation or administrative rights.

install:

Download the latest installer below, and double click on it. When the installer asks for a destination folder, pick one you can write to, such as your desktop or a folder on your USB drive. A good choice (especially if you have installed the PortableApps suite and launcher) is

X:\PortableApps\MaximaPortable,

where X: is your portable drive letter.

Note that it can take some time to install this application to a USB drive due to its size (about 130MB) and the fact that writing to USB drives is typically slow.

run:

If you have the portable apps suite, then double click on the "StartPortableApps.exe" on the root of your USB drive, then choose "Maxima Portable" from the portable apps launcher menu in the system tray. If you only installed Maxima Portable, open the installation folder and double-click "MaximaPortable.exe"

You may get a warning from Windows Firewall about blocking some features of wxMaxima. You can safely ignore this message and the application will work fine. [wxMaxima uses a socket to communicate with maxima, but they are running on the same machine, and so they don't ever use the network in any case. ]

use:

Click in the main window area and type sin(%pi/3). Press the keys [control+enter] together for maxima to evaluate the expression.

Now type float(%) [control+enter] to see this approximated as a floating point number (% means "last answer").

Finally, enter sin(%pi*x) [control+enter], then click on , and then .

Browse through the menus and imagine the possibilties....

Now try A 10-Minute Tutorial.

remove:

Delete the MaximaPortable folder.

download:

Portable apps are windows applications.

Wine can run portable apps on other operating systems.

Maxima Portable 5.17.1.0
Download Maxima Portable 5.17.1.0 [25MB download / 130MB installed]
(MD5: e3c47223b34b0064e11182da8085971b)

Release Notes:

5.17.1.0 (2009-02-20): Initial release based on Maxima 5.17.1 and wxMaxima 0.8.1

Known Issues

• The help does not refer to this page, because I don't want to host it long term here.
• Running the app compression (recommended step for creating a portable app) breaks maxima, so I didn't do that. This means it is about 10% larger than it could be.
• It may complain about blocking a feature (a socket connection used between wxMaxima and maxima). Everything works after checking "ignore" and clicking "ok" on the warning dialog.