Maxima/Methods of use

Users have choices as to the kind of interface used to interact with Maxima. These choices inevitably have an influence on the installation source and process used to install Maxima on a computer with a particular operating system - notably MS Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. The following is a concise list of the various interactive interface options: Online by way of a web browser interface , without installationMaxima Online - WASM https://maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev/ 2026-04-19 maxima-on-wasm.pages.dev Offline after installation on a computer system Using a graphical user interface (with a GUI) From a terminal console (without a GUI) The online web browser interface may be useful for beginners that want to try Maxima for the first time, or for occasions when a local installation is not available for some reason. This web browser interface includes a link to the Maxima Documentation, which is best characterized as a reference manual with some examples, and not as a user guide. After installation of Maxima alone without a GUI, the user can interface with the Maxima CLI by way of a terminal console by entering:$> maximaThis should start Maxima as follows:none|frame The (%i1) prompt is where the first Maxima expression is entered by the user. For example: (%i1) 'integrate(%e^(2*t+a)*sin(t)*t,t); ⌠ ⎮ 2 t + a (%o1) ⎮ %e t sin(t) dt ⎮ ⌡ (%i2)It is likely that most users will find that interacting with Maxima from a terminal console (without a GUI) is somewhat crude, and furthermore all input expressions and output expressions are not persistent between sessions. Hence, the GUI option is generally recommended, but at the cost of having to become familiar with the GUI of choice. There are two commonly used GUIs for Maxima: Xmaxima -- https://maxima.sourceforge.io/docs/xmaxima/xmaxima.pdf wxMaxima -- https://wxmaxima-developers.github.io/wxmaxima/index.html Xmaxima is typically included with the Maxima installation. It is very similar to the terminal console GUI. none|frame wxMaxima is unquestionably the more comprehensive, complete, and useful GUI presently available for Maxima. none|frame Maxima is typically more useful as an interactive tool. However, it can be used to execute a file containing Maxima expressions. To execute Maxima expressions saved in a file named c.mac for example, and save output to a text file named c.txt use a command from a terminal shell session such as: $> maxima -b c.mac >c.txt References Maxima Online - WASM 25%