PCB tools for Linux (was Whenceforth the Ubuntu fanboyz now?)

[Christopher Browne]

On 2/12/07, Christopher Friedt <cfriedt-u6hQ6WWl8Q3d1t4wvoaeXtBPR1lH4CV8 at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > BTW, does Octave handle equation solving along the lines of TK! Solver?
> > I'm talking about a program where you can enter a formula, give it some
> > known values for the variables and have it solve for the unknowns
> > without have to re-arrange the formula.
> >
> > ie. Enter the formula for resonant frequency (Fr), provide values for Fr
> > and C and have the program solve for L.
> >
>
> I think what Kevin is talking about above is symbolic math facilities,
> which i know that matlab & mathematica allow for. Matlab is _ok_ for
> this, so long as you've forked out all of the cash for the latest
> version. At my lab we have version 2007b or something like that, and
> symbolic math works like a charm (integration, simplification)
>
> On the other hand, at my old lab, our version of matlab was 7.0.1 andS
> its symbolic editor crashed on every use, claiming something to do with
> the libc version on the system.
>
> I'm fairly interested in using octave a bit more too, does anyone know
> any other information about it? From what I understand, it has a syntax
> that is practically identical to matlab - along with many of the same
> built-in functions.

Octave declares itself to be intended to provide a "language that is
mostly compatible with Matlab."

Thus, it's good at manipulating matrix objects.

If what is desired is a system for solving symbolic algebraic
expressions, then Matlab isn't what is wanted.  Matlab can solve
linear algebra problems, but that amounts to solving things that look
like:
  Ax = b
where A is a matrix, and b and x are vectors.

If you want a free computer algebra system, well, there are a number of those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_computer_algebra_systems

Most of them are available on Linux, some under OSS sorts of licenses.
 The more "general purpose" options that are readily available
include:
 - Maxima (a version of Maxsyma)
 - Axiom (formerly called Sketchpad)

These are a simple "apt-get install maxima axiom" away on a Debian system...

The other historical big names are Maple (produced by Waterloo's SCG)
and Mathematica (Wolfram).  They're thousands of dollars per seat...
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