KNOPPIX/Math Tatsuyoshi Hamada∗ and Knoppix/Math committers ∗ Department of Applied Mathematics, Fukuoka University email: [email protected]

Introduction Mathematical software systems How to run the live system (IntelMac) KNOPPIX/Math is a project to archive free mathematical This CD/DVD contains a lot of documents and packages of software and free mathematical documents and offer them mathematical software systems. Once you run the live sys- on KNOPPIX. It provides a desktop for mathematicians tem, you can experience a wonderful world of mathemati- that can be set up easily and quickly. cal software systems without needing to make any installa- tions yourself. In order to run the live system, we recom- mend to use the PC emulator ”Parallels desktop for Mac” or “VMware fusion”. Note that you need to set the ”energy save” to ”better performance” in the ”system preferences”. Otherwise, the parallel virtual machine will not return after being in sleep mode. Figure 3: CoCoA FAQ (frequently asked questions) Q. Where can I find documents of mathematical software systems. A. Click “KNOPPIX-Math-Start” on the desktop of the live system. It will show you a list of software systems and documents. You can also launch systems from this list. Figure 1: KNOPPIX/Math desktop. Q. After the power is turned off, I lose all documents which Our system includes TEX, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, I wrote. GNU Emacs, Kile, a KDE based GUI TEX editor, Whizzy- A. If you boot from the CD/DVD, all documents are stored TeX and Active-DVI, a pair of WYSIWYG utilities for TEX Figure 4: Gambit in the RAM. Then, you will lose all your data after the documents, and GNU TEXmacs, an office suite for TEX power is turned off. In order to save data permanently, writing. The CD includes many mathematical software sys- you need to copy them to a USB memory or to the hard tems or libraries with documents, such as auto07, BLAS, disk. Please visit the KNOPPIX site for more details. If Dynagraph, freefem++, GANG, GAP, Geomview, Gnuplot, you boot from the VMware image in the VMware Player, Hyplane, Kali, Kan, Knot, KnotPlot, Knotscape, KSEG, all documents which you wrote will be stored perma- LAPACK, LiE, Macaulay2, Maxima, NZMATH, Octave, nently in your harddisk. OpenXM, PARI/GP, Qhull, R, Risa/Asir, Singular, Snap- Q. How do I copy documents to other machines? Pea, surf, Surface Evolver, Teruaki, XaoS, and Yorick, ... The DVD also includes more additional mathematical soft- A. There are numerous ways (1) sending documents as an ware systems, such as Axiom, C.a.R., CoCoA, CoCoALib, attachment of a web mail (2) using the “scp” command Coq, Dr. Geo, 4ti2, Gambit, GEONExT, GeoGebra, Geo- Figure 5: Macaulay2 (3) using samba or ssh with “konqueror” Proof, Gfan, ginac, gmp, HOL Light, HOM4PS, jtem, Q. Can I boot this CD/DVD on my Mac? KANT/KASH, Kig, math-polyglot, MixedVol PHCpack, A. If the CPU is the PowerPC, unfortunately, we cannot. PHoM, polymake, SAGE, surfex, synaps, TC, XLISP- But, you can read some documents in the CD/DVD. STAT, and Yacas, ... Q. How do I install the KNOPPIX/Math to my hard disk How to run the live system (Windows machine like other linux systems? or PC/AT compatibles) A. If you are an expert, please use the command “knx2hd” This CD/DVD contains a lot of documents and packages of or “LC ALL=C knx2hd”. This is an experimental com- mathematical software systems. Once you run the live sys- mand. (If you fail to initialize the hard disk, please use tem, you can experience a wonderful world of mathematical other linux distributions to initialize the hard disk or use Figure 6: Risa/Asir(OpenXM) software systems without needing to make any installations the commands “cfdisk” and “mkfs”.) If you are not ex- yourself. This is a bootable CD/DVD. If you can boot from pert, we recommend you do not try this and instead use the CD/DVD, then please reboot. The live system will be the preinstalled image file for the VMware Player. It is ready. very easy and comfortable. Q. The computer starts from the CD/DVD, but the screen becomes black and the system hangs. What should I do? A. Our system does not use your hard disk unless you mount it. Therefore, you may turn off your power switch and it will cause no damage to your computer. There are several boot options (cheatcodes). You can Figure 7: Sage see them by pressing F2 or F3. A typical boot option which will lead you to a successful booting is “knoppix screen=1024x768” or “knoppix xmodule=fbdev”

Figure 2: KNOPPIX/Math is booting. If your machine is not bootable, or has very special hard- Figure 10: F2 Figure 10: F3 ware devices which KNOPPIX cannot drive, we recom- Q. Can I use other language? mend you download the VMware Player. Once you have installed the VMware Player, you can start our live sys- Figure 8: Singular A. Boot with “knoppix lang=ja”. You can see other lan- tem from this DVD or from our preinstalled virtual ma- guage options in F3. For example, Chinese, Taiwanese, chine (faster) for VMware Player. The instructions for Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Italian KDE installing and using the virtual machine can be found in menus are supported. http://www.math.kobe-u.ac.jp/vmkm/ Note that when you Q. Can I use old computer? install the VMware Player, the Norton internet security or A. Yes, but KDE is very heavy application, you should equivalent software systems should be turned off. change Window Manager with boot option: “knoppix desktop=fluxbox” or “knoppix desktop=twm”.

Figure 9: surfex

This document is distributed with the GNU free documentation license version 1.2. List of contributors of this document: Tatsuyoshi Hamada, Masayuki Noro, Nobuki Takayama, and Wayne Rossman