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Mathematica free on the Raspberry Pi

Wolfram have released a version of Mathematica and the new Wolfram Language to run on the low-cost Raspberry Pi computer, and both are free.

I have Mathematica up and running on my Raspberry Pi, having followed the instructions on the Raspberry Pi site; future Raspbian images will ship with the Wolfram Language and Mathematica by default.

Existing users with at least 600MB of free space on their SD card can install them today by typing

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wolfram-engine

at the command prompt.

You’ll find Mathematica in the graphical user interface (GUI) desktop environment.  This is launched from the command prompt with startx. Mathematica will have installed in the app launcher under the Education menu (just above Scratch and Squeak).

It takes a while to start up (about 5 minutes on my Pi) and then you are in. I’ve not had much chance yet to try it out yet, not being a regular Mathematica user, but here’s a video of someone else trying it out:

[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J3I2iHmC0c]

I have also tried out some of these examples posted on the Raspberry Pi forums.

Although not fast in its current release (on my Pi I found it a bit too slow currently to be really very usable), it is working and is great to have it as a free resource.

More information

Putting the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) on Every Raspberry Pi at Stephen Wolfram’s blog.

Wolfram’s Raspberry Pi site.

3 Responses to “Mathematica free on the Raspberry Pi”

  1. Avatar Arnoud Buzing

    A startup time of 5 minutes seems excessive, my own experience is about 25-30 seconds. (I use the model B with 512MB). Is this slow startup time reproducible for you or was it just once?

    Reply

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