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<span>A Computer Algebra System</span>
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<div class="card">
<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<ol>
  <li>Introduction and installation of Maxima
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#question1_1">What is Maxima?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question1_2">What license is Maxima under?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question1_3">How can I download Maxima?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question1_4">How do I install Maxima?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question1_5">What are the most important Maxima
    links that I should know?</a></li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>General
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#question2_1">Who is maintaining Maxima now?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question2_2">Is Maxima free?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question2_3">Can I post a copy of Maxima in my local
    server for my students/customers to easily download it?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question2_4">Who wrote Maxima?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question2_5">What's the difference among Macsyma,
    DOE-Macsyma, Symbolics Macsyma and Maxima?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question2_6">What is the appropriate way to cite
    Maxima in an academic context?</a></li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>Lisp related issues
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#question3_1">What Lisp implementations will Maxima
    work with?</a></li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>Installation problems
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#question4_1">While installing the Maxima RPM file in
     Linux, I get an error that &quot;maxima_exec&quot; is a missing
     dependency; how can I solve that?</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question4_2">While installing RPM files file from
    Maxima, I get messages about failed dependencies on stuff other
    than maxima_exec; what does that mean?</a></li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>Run-time problems
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#question5_1">In Windows, I can launch the Maxima GUI
    (either Xmaxima or WxMaxima), but then there is a timeout message
    and I don’t get any response when I enter some
    expression.</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question5_2">In Linux, I get a message about an
    invalid entry for localhost in <code>/etc/hosts</code>
    file.</a></li>
    <li><a href="#question5_3">In MacOS, wxmaxima starts but every
    attempt to execute Maxima commands reports &quot;Not connected to
    maxima!&quot;</a></li>
  </ul></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="card">
<h3>1. Introduction and installation of Maxima</h3>
<p id="question1_1">&cir; <em>What is Maxima?</em></p>
<p>Maxima is a descendant of DOE
<strong>Macsyma</strong>, which had its origins in the late 1960s at
MIT. It is the only system based on that effort still publicly
available and with an active user community, thanks to its open source
nature. Macsyma was the first of a new breed of computer algebra
systems, leading the way for programs such as Maple and
Mathematica. This particular variant of Macsyma was maintained by
William Schelter from 1982 until he passed away in 2001. In 1998 he
obtained permission to release the source code under GPL. It was his
efforts and skill which have made the survival of Maxima possible, and
we are very grateful to him for volunteering his time and skill to
keep the original Macsyma code alive and well. Since his passing a
group of users and developers has formed to keep Maxima alive and
kicking. Maxima itself is reasonably feature complete at this stage,
with abilities such as symbolic integration, 3D plotting, and an ODE
solver, but there is a lot of work yet to be done in terms of bug
fixing, cleanup, and documentation. This is not to say there will be
no new features, but there is much work to be done before that stage
will be reached, and for now new features are not likely to be our
focus.</p>
<p id="question1_2">&cir; <em>What license is Maxima under?</em></p>
<p>It is licensed under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General
Public License</a> (GPL) and hosted at <a href="https://sourceforge.net">SourceForge.net</a>.</p>
<p id="question1_3" >&cir; <em>How can I download Maxima?</em></p>
<p>You can choose among the different downloading options in
the <a href="download.html">Download page</a>, which has the links to
the appropriate download page for each case. The code is available as
prepackaged binary files for different systems as well as in source
code form.</p>
<p id="question1_4">&cir; <em>How do I install Maxima?</em></p>
<p>Follow the instructions in the <a href="download.html">Download
page</a>, according to your system and the method you would like to
use.</p>
<p id="question1_5">&cir; <em>What are the most important Maxima links that
I should know?</em></p>
<ul class="spacious">
<li><a href="index.html">Maxima homepage</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/">Maxima project page</a>.</li>
<li><a href="./maximalist.html">Maxima mailing list</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="card">
<h3>2. General</h3>
<p id="question2_1">&cir; <em>Who is maintaining Maxima now?</em></p>
<p>Since William Schelter’s passing a group of users and developers
has formed to keep Maxima under active development. There are
currently 27 developers who can make changes to the source code. To
get in touch with them, the preferred channel is
the <a href="./maximalist.html">mailing list</a>.</p>
<p id="question2_2">&cir; <em>Is Maxima free?</em></p>
<p>Yes. Maxima is distributed under the GNU General Public License,
with some export restrictions from the U. S. Department of Energy.</p>
<p id="question2_3">&cir; <em>Can I post a copy of Maxima in my local server
for my students/customers to easily download it?</em></p>
<p>Yes. You can distribute Maxima, provided you keep the copyright
notice intact and you also include in your local server a copy of the
source code or a link to where that source code can be downloaded.</p>
<p id="question2_4">&cir; <em>Who wrote Maxima?</em></p>
<p>Maxima is a descendant of <em>DOE Macsyma</em>, which had its
origins in the late 1960s at MIT. It is the only system based on that
effort still publicly available and with an active user community,
thanks to its open source nature. Macsyma was the first of a new breed
of computer algebra systems, leading the way for programs such as
Maple and Mathematica. This particular variant of Macsyma was
maintained by William Schelter from 1982 until he passed away in
2001. In 1998 he obtained permission to release the source code under
the GPL.</p>
<p id="question2_5">&cir; <em>What's the difference among Macsyma,
DOE-Macsyma, Symbolics Macsyma and Maxima?</em></p>
<p>The system developed at MIT was called
<em>Macsyma</em> (although the nicknames MACSYM and
MAXIMA were sometimes used since filenames were limited
to six uppercase-only characters in sixbit character
code).</p>
<p>Symbolics licensed Macsyma from M.I.T. and registered "Macsyma" as
a trademark at some point (presumably with M. I. T.’s permission).</p>
<p>When Macsyma source ceased to be freely available, pressure was put
on M. I. T. (mostly by Richard Fateman) to transfer the code which had
been developed largely with Department of Energy (DOE) funding to the
DOE, which then released it to others under certain conditions.</p>
<p>That codebase was called DOE Macsyma. It is not clear what legal
rights the DOE had to the name Macsyma as opposed to the codebase, but
presumably the non-commercial users of DOE Macsyma wanted to avoid any
legal wrangling around the name, and started using the name Maxima at
some point.</p>
<p>Maxima is simply the most recent name for the branch
that started under the name DOE Macsyma.</p>
<p id="question2_6">&cir; <em>What is the appropriate way to cite Maxima in
an academic context?</em></p>
<p>We suggest something like:</p>
<blockquote>
<a href="https://maxima.sourceforge.io">Maxima.sourceforge.io</a>. Maxima,
a Computer Algebra System.<br>
Version 5.49.0 (2025). <code>https://maxima.sourceforge.io/</code>
</blockquote>
<p>(or replace the version number and release year, if you are using a
different version).</p>
<p>If you use Bibtex for your citations, we recommend that you add the
following entry in your bibtex database:</p>
<pre>@ELECTRONIC{maxima,
author = {Maxima},
year = {2025},
title = {Maxima, a Computer Algebra System.  Version 5.49.0},
address = {https://maxima.sourceforge.io/},
url = {https://maxima.sourceforge.io/},
owner = {maxima},
timestamp = {2025.12.18}
}</pre>
</div>
<div class="card">
<h3>3. Lisp related issues</h3>
<p id="question3_1">&cir; <em>What Lisp implementations will Maxima
work with?</em></p>
<p>Clisp, SBCL, CCL, GCL (ANSI-enabled only), CMUCL, ECL, Scieneer
Common Lisp (SCL), Allegro Common Lisp (ACL) and ABCL. Ports to other
ANSI lisps should be straightforward and are welcome; please contact
the developers if you are interested in working on a port. See also
the <a href="lisp.html">Maxima and Lisp</a> page.</p>
</div>
<div class="card">
<h3>4. Installation problems</h3>
<p id="question4_1">&cir; <em>While installing the Maxima RPM file in
Linux, I get an error that &quot;maxima_exec&quot; is a missing
dependency; how can I solve that?</em></p>
<p>You must install at least two rpm packages, maxima and
maxima_exec. Go back to the SourceForge file manager and download
a <code>maxima-exec</code> package and install that at the same time
as the maxima package.</p>
<p id="question4_2">&cir; <em>While installing RPM files file from
Maxima, I get messages about failed dependencies on stuff other than
maxima_exec; what does that mean?</em></p>
<p>The Maxima RPMs were created on a specific Linux system. Other
systems have different versions of various libraries. To install
Maxima, the library versions must be the same.  You might be able to
find rpms for your specific Linux version via the Maxima ports
page. You can recompile Maxima on your system. The rpms created that
way have the right dependencies for your system.</p>
<p>To recompile Maxima, you need a Lisp implementation. We recommend
Clisp.  Once you have Clisp installed, download the
Maxima <code>src.rpm</code> from the SF file manager. Unpack it and
launch rpmbuild to create the rpm files:</p>
<pre>$ sudo rpm -ih maxima-5.49.0.src.rpm
$ cd /usr/src/local   # or wherever rpm source code is located
$ sudo rpmbuild -bb SPECS/maxima.spec</pre>
<p>Then install the rpm files which were created
in <code>/usr/src/local/RPMS</code>.</p>
<p>You almost certainly need superuser privileges to write files
to <code>/usr/src/local</code>, hence the use of sudo. Perhaps you can
get your friendly system administrator to handle it.</p>
<p>If you create RPMs, we can host them in the Sourceforge file
manager; it would be helpful to anyone running the same Linux
flavor.</p>
<p>The installation notes in
the <a href="./download.html">Download</a> section say a little bit
more about rebuilding Maxima. In particular, follow the links
to <code>README.lisps</code> and <code>README.rpms</code>.</p>
</div>
<div class="card">
<h3>5. Run-time problems</h3>
<p id="question5_1">&cir; <em>In Windows, I can launch the Maxima GUI
(either Xmaxima or WxMaxima), but then there is a timeout message and
I don’t get any response when I enter some expression.</em></p>
<dl class="spacious">
  <dt><strong>Problem 1.</strong> <em>Blocked socket</em>.</dt>
  <dd>Maxima GUI programs talk to the computational engine through a
  socket. Antivirus and/or firewall programs see that and try to block
  it (because some malicious programs open sockets too).<br>
  <strong>Solution</strong>: Try to find the control panel for the
  antivirus and/or firewall. Find the Maxima GUI on the list of
  blocked programs and disable blocking for it. The GUI program might
  appear as &quot;Tcl/Tk&quot; (the name of the GUI toolkit for
  Xmaxima).</dd>
  <dt><strong>Problem 2.</strong> <em>Data execution prevention</em> (DEP).</dt>
  <dd>Some Lisp implementations execute code in data areas of
  memory. Windows DEP sees that and blocks it (because some malicious
  programs execute code in data areas too).<br>
  <strong>Solution</strong>: Include the full program path of the
  Maxima executable, for
  example: <code>C:\Program Files\Maxima-5.48.1\lib\maxima\5.48.1\binary-gcl\maxima.exe</code>
  in the list of DEP exceptions (Control Panel → System → Advanced →
  Performance → DEP)</dd>
</dl>
<p id="question5_2">&cir; <em>In Linux, I get a message about an
invalid entry for localhost in <code>/etc/hosts</code> file.</em></p>
<p>Make sure there is an entry that matches: <code>127.0.0.1
localhost</code>, otherwise wxmaxima and/or xmaxima will be unable to
resolve "localhost" to a valid IP and then fail with &quot;maxima
terminated&quot;.</p>
<p id="question5_3">&cir; <em>In MacOS, wxmaxima starts but every
attempt to execute Maxima commands reports &quot;Not connected to
maxima!&quot;.</em></p>
<p>Probably your best bet is to report this problem on the wxMaxima
user forum.  There are reports that wxMaxima does not work if Maxima
is compiled with clisp or sbcl. If you are using one of those Lisp
versions, you might want to try compiling Maxima with cmucl.</p>
</div>
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<p>Any questions about Maxima or this site can be sent to our
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<span>Last modified: 2026/03/01 17:27:50 UTC</span>
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