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Wolfram Language and Mathematica Free on Every Raspberry Pi
- gjvc 4y agoThis is great!
- gjvc 4y agoI'm sorry to those I offended with this statement.
- abudabi123 4y agoSelecting previously unselected package wolfram-engine:armhf. Preparing to unpack .../80-wolfram-engine_13.1.0+20220824413_armhf.deb ... wolfram-eula license has already been accepted Is there a way through the Activation Key, Activate Online prompt? I think I tried what was possible and never got through.
- hgsgm 4y agoWhat is your question?
- znpy 4y agoI remember trying to get it running on a rPI 3 (just 1gb ram) and was huge to download and slow as molasses to boot? did it improve, btw ?
- bradrn 4y agoIIRC, this has been the case for a while. I seem to recall getting a Raspberry Pi ~5 years ago which had Mathematica on it. Admittedly it was quite slow, but as far as I can recall it did work.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago10 years now. Found post that was first announced: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2013/11/putting-the-wolfram-language-and-mathematica-on-every-raspberry-pi/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2013/11/putting-the-wolf...
- atomlib 4y ago9 full years.
- icepat 4y agoYes, it's been around for ages. I actually used a Pi when learning linear algebra to generate problem sets.
- RobotToaster 4y agoI'm guessing this was posted in response to this post yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34940505#34941838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34940505#34941838
- wjholden 4y agoThe Raspberry Pi is how I got introduced to Mathematica in 2019. I actually it for Advent of Code that year, which was difficult and frustrating but a huge learning experience!
- Aardwolf 4y agoWhat exactly is the boundary between commercial and non-commercial use? E.g. say you make an educational video that contains a portion of using Mathematica on RPI, and you could get ads income, is that indirect or direct commercial use? What if you use it to compute dimensions of some woodworking art piece that you sell later? What if you make a scientific or mathematical discovery thanks to it that you later use in some way to make money?
- hiddencost 4y agoThe zeroeth boundary is "what your conscience will enforce." The first boundary is "what Wolfram is willing to enforce". The second boundary is "what a judge is willing to enforce". Likely the 0th boundary will kick in before the other two. If too many people misuse this, Wolfram may decide it was a bad idea and end the program. In practical terms, an overwhelming percentage of revenue comes from large institutions. Who have no incentive to steal the software.
- analog31 4y agoAlso, since it's running on a Raspberry Pi, "what your patience will enforce," basically a performance limited version of the software.
- kzrdude 4y agoit's an arm executable, so I've been wondering if it can be lifted over to run on Apple Silicon.
- jmugan 4y agoThose boundaries are pretty stressful.
- CuriousCosmic 4y agoFrom the Rpi Mathematica bundle license agreement: Permitted Uses and Installations: Subject to the terms of this Agreement and Your acceptance thereof, WRI grants You a non-exclusive license to use the Product solely for personal or educational purposes on a Model A or Model B Raspberry Pi computer. You are also authorized to: - maintain one archival copy of the Software on storage media; and - author and distribute Computable Document Format™ (CDF) files consistent with any associated licensing terms. Prohibited Uses: All uses of the Software and other elements of the Product not specifically stated in the Permitted Uses and Installations section of this Agreement or otherwise set forth in alternative or supplemental license agreements or terms of use are prohibited, including, without limitation: - directly or indirectly using the Product for commercial purposes; - decompiling, disassembling or reverse engineering the Software; - modifying the Software in any manner, except those portions written in the Wolfram Language and included as examples; - distributing, publishing, transferring, sublicensing, lending, leasing, renting or otherwise making available the Product or any portion of the Software, including collections of data, except as permitted at https://www.wolfram.com/components https://www.wolfram.com/components for distributing Wolfram Language code; - copying or allowing copying of the Product or any elements of the Product, except as permitted for the maintenance of an archival copy of the Software as allowed by the Permitted Uses and Installations section of this Agreement; - allowing access to the Product by any user other than Licensee; - removing any copyright, trademark or other proprietary notices from the Product; - installing separate components of each Controlling Process or Computation Process on separate computers, with the exception that the front end of a Controlling Process can be on a separate computer from the associated kernel; - using the Software for any illegal purpose or to create malicious programs, including but not limited to creating computer viruses and malware or denying computer bandwidth to WRI and its affiliates and users; and - using a password, activation key or other means of accessing the Software other than as specifically authorized by WRI. https://www.wolfram.com/legal/agreements/wolfram-mathematica-raspberry-pi/ https://www.wolfram.com/legal/agreements/wolfram-mathematica...
- schappim 4y agoHas this not been a thing for 10 years?
- rmu09 4y agoI wonder how this (on a raspi 4) compares to mathematica we used to use in ~1995 at uni on HPPA machines with <1GB RAM?
- rcarmo 4y agoIt is _way_ faster :)
- prof-dr-ir 4y agoI use Mathematica frequently and, within the niche that it serves, it is starting to remind me a lot of Excel. Both are commercial software, have a low barrier to entry, are powerful enough to run the software for a nuclear power plant, have enough footguns to make this a terrible idea, and are so overused that it might be happening anyway. But I do not think we will get rid of it any time soon.
- cube2222 4y agoCould you expand on, for a person who only dabbled with Mathematica some time back, what that niche is?
- prof-dr-ir 4y agoMathematica usage appears widespread in my own domain of theoretical physics, but it is probably used in elsewhere as well.
- mhh__ 4y agoA good niche for mathematica is finance: type in your equations, tell it what "type" your variables are, let it solve them. Let the machine get it right.
- CuriousCosmic 4y agoAs a random computer engineer, I find using mathematica to be extremely convenient when trying to grok a problem or lay out a first attempt at a solution. Of course it isn't really helpful when dealing with glue issues (i.e. making software work together) but it is really good at letting you experiment at a high level and put together an algorithm to process/interpret/transform/generate some data. I say it's good for high level experimentation because basically every function/transform/operation/solver you could ever need is present in the standard library [1] and stuff "just works". IMHO it's not really something you'd want in production but it lets you get an MVP for a given problem/solution working faster than any other tool I've used and all while rarely needing to even consider a 3rd party library. You can then focus on just mapping that MVP to whatever language/library/ecosystem you are actually working in. 1. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ https://reference.wolfram.com/language/
- notpushkin 4y agoI'm wondering if anybody have managed to run it on Asahi.
- rcarmo 4y agoIt checks for Pi-specific hardware devices, so you’re unlikely to get it going there.
- UncleSlacky 4y agoI've run it on a PC using QEMU a few years back, though maybe the hardware detection has improved. I followed instructions similar to this: https://blog.agchapman.com/using-qemu-to-emulate-a-raspberry-pi/ https://blog.agchapman.com/using-qemu-to-emulate-a-raspberry...
- dantle 4y agoDid you have the full GUI running back then? I tried this in 2021 but couldn’t get the GUI to launch. It seemed like an expected graphics lib wasn’t available.
- rcarmo 4y agoWhen I ran a cluster of it (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830) it was checking for the Pi hardware devices.
- Y_Y 4y agoI feel about this the way I feel about "free" Windows when you buy a computer from a mainstream retailer. It's not worth the price, it's not a gift, it's just an adverstisement and a gateway to the walled garden. I have a normal Mathematica license and for the few times it's the right tool for the job I find myself reaching for something else anyway. I can almost always get things done with FOSS (usually within the python ecosystem) and I don't have to think about activations or Mr. Wolfram.
- Dalewyn 4y agoWhile I understand what you are saying, using Windows as an example is bad because Windows is not a walled garden. If you want examples of a walled garden, look at MacOS/iOS, Android (kind of), and arguably even the Linuxes (question of practicality).
- Qem 4y agoThe old tactic of trying to get children hooked by making the first doses free.
- duckmysick 4y agoThe obvious solution is to teach children how to make the doses themselves.
- codeflo 4y agoJesus. It’s a piece of software that people may or may not find useful.
- anaganisk 4y agoWow, did Freecell, solitaire, and Pinball in windows cause addiction to gambling in children? That's how it sounds. Me and brother were into RPis since 2B and always used Raspbian. Never did we once even clicked on Mathematica, I know many people in the community who never clicked Mathematica. Rpi also has a good Python integration, which is very well endorsed by the community and and obvious choice for many.
- rcarmo 4y agoThis has been a thing for a while, and if you have enough Pis, you can even run it on a clustered kernel setup - I did that a few years ago with 5 Pi 2 boards (20 cores in all): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830
- ProllyInfamous 4y agoWhat is the relative performance of a five-cluster Pi2 setup? I would imagine much less than even a comparable expense spent for a basic home desktop.
- rcarmo 4y agoYou would be correct, which is why I don't own it anymore. Doing it with Pi 4s would be interesting, but if I had to set up a sub-EUR 1000 cluster I'd go and grab 2-3 Celeron N5105 mini PCs, which would _in total_ have less than 90W consumption (although physically powering them would be a hassle - I was able to power all the Pi2s from a single Anker charger, which was great).
- mycall 4y agoI'm impressed on the speed of the new i3-N300/N305 at 7w or 9w/15w https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231806/intel-core-i3n300-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-80-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231806/...
- steponlego 4y agowhat's shitty is there's no online help or completion
- fsiefken 4y agoI wonder if you could run it on a Orange Pi board or Nvidia Jetson board (or perhaps even the Nvidia Grace arm CPU) as well or does it check for the RPi chip?
- SloopJon 4y agoI toyed with trying to get it running on a Jeston Nano a couple of years ago. At the time, Raspbian was still 32 bit, JetPack was 64 bit, and running 32-bit Debian software on 64-bit Ubuntu was more of a pain than I wanted to deal with. If it still ships with 64-bit Raspbian it might be worth another try, but I would not be at all surprised if it's somehow tied to the Pi.
- lvl102 4y agoThey need to make Python first class. I’d immediately switch to Mathematica for everything data/statistics related.
- Qem 4y agoThe free, Python-based, most complete alternative is SageMath.
- hgsgm 4y agoYou need it, not them. Python is the biggest threat to their vendor-lockin business model. Mathematica is so hard to use because they want you to invest sunk cost into learning the Wolfram Way.
- lvl102 4y agoAnd I think that’s very shortsighted of them. They could’ve had a big hand in AI/ML/DL considering how widely Mathematica was used in undergraduate programs across the world.
- destitude 4y agoand... you still can't find Pi's to purchase anywhere.
- TMWNN 4y agoI got my first by signing up for a restock notification at `pishop.us`. I'm not doing anything heavy on it—`chrony`, `cups`, and dynamic DNS—but I'd always wanted a discrete (and discreet) small server for such tasks, and it was inexpensive and easy to assemble.
- Roark66 4y agoI wonder who paid who in this deal. Is free Mathematica used to prop up an OS no one uses, on boards no one can buy(for their normal prices). Or is it raspberry pi foundation taking part in Wolfram advertising? Mathematica is a very nice product, but it's expensive. They tend to "get" people by offering cheap licenses through universities. Then there is free and open source Octave. It is just as good for everything I used it for, but sometimes code for Mathematica requires tweaking before it could run on Octave.
- hrkipp 4y agoI think you’re confusing Mathematica and Matlab here.
- SSLy 4y agoOctave is impl of Matlab, unrelated to Mathematica/Wolframlang.
- lockhouse 4y agoWhy do you assume money changed hands at all? Raspberry Pi Foundation gets another high profile and very desirable piece of educational software to include in their OS so it's a big win for them (and some of their users). Wolfram gets a bunch of potential paying users when the children/college students/hobbyists get into the workforce and decide to use Mathematica in a commercial setting or pay for licenses of their own to use on their own more powerful workstations at home. Looks like a win-win for everyone. I'm not really understanding all the negativity here. If it's because Mathematica is closed source, the Raspberry Pi OS image already includes closed source software like Minecraft education edition.
- photochemsyn 4y agoUnless you plan on migrating to the paid tier of Wolfram for professional use, it makes more sense to just use sagemath + mathics: https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/interfaces/sage/interfaces/mathics.html https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/interfaces/sage/i... If you're more interested in learning programming, the underlying python libraries like sympy are of more value for algebraic solving, plus numpy and matplotlib for evaluating and visualizing.
- cmsonger 4y agoOwned a NeXT Cube (and later color station) back in the day. Mathematica came free. Was glorious, perhaps even more so back then. OTOH, I'm sure it did a lot less. OTOH, the baseline was so much lower.
- Koshkin 4y agoI remember it being slow - to the point of almost being unusable (at least on the earlier versions of the RPi.)
- qwerty456127 4y agoThe fact it's free is really cool but the choice to limit this to Raspberry Pi is rather weird because Raspberry Pis are painfully slow (can't even navigate YouTube comfortably) and even fairly hard to acquire in the first place. They should rather make it free for all individual non-commercial tinkerer no matter the hardware they use. I believe this would ensure popularity sustainability and the raspberry-only way may turn out not enough. I would consider this a great way to promote genuine Raspberry Pi over the clones but as long as Raspberry Pi demand exceeds the offer anyway this doesn't make much sense.
- ok123456 4y agoSo they don't cannibalize their institutional sales at universities.
- qwerty456127 4y agoSure, that's why I say not just non-commercial but also individual.
- ok123456 4y agoPeople at the university would just 'individual' download it for non-commercial use.
- brudgers 4y agoPeople did useful work with Mathematica on the computers of 35 years ago. They had a tiny fraction of an RPi's compute. Maybe because interesting mathematics is more the product of interested mathematicians rather than hardware. With Mathematica around for 35 years, there's evidence that it has a sustainable model with regard to popularity.
- qwerty456127 4y agoI knew real science stars who ran Mathematica on 486 with huge success. But that's a different story. This project targets hobbyists and kids educating themselves and this normally involves watching YouTube tutorials/lectures and googling information up. For some people this can be good and teach them patience, for many this will be an obstacle and divert them to alternatives. Mathematica is great but has keep the competition in mind. I am afraid it will decline heavily sooner or later.
- bmitc 4y agoIt's an extremely great benefit, but honestly, the Raspberry Pi's are so slow, it can make for a difficult experience.
- worik 4y agoHe gives the kiss free samples Because he knows full well Today's innocent young faces Are tomorrow's clientele
- vivegi 4y agoThis is nice. I am going to try it on my RasPi.
- justin66 4y agoThey haven't made a 64-bit version for the Pi yet, and Mathematica is not a menu option when you setup 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS. The traditional 32-bit version is installable on 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS if you enable packages for the armhf architecture. I wonder if anyone knows when the 64-bit version is coming? From Wolfram's point of view, keeping the binaries restricted to armhf might perhaps be taking the place of more onerous copy-protection or licensing features.