Re: which Linux distribution offers the best octave-support?

[Quentin Spencer]

Przemek Klosowski wrote:

>   And if you're really worried about latest versions, or need specific
>   features of latest Octave versions, then probably you should try Debian sid.
>   I'm using the stable sarge version, and use Octave a lot, without problem.
>   But it has octave version 2.0.17. Sid has 2.1.71.
>
> Just to keep the score, I want to point out that Fedora 4 includes octave
> by default from the extras repository, and it's 2.1.71; octave-forge is
> also included.
>  

I think there are basically two distributions that really have a 
complete set of octave-related packages: Fedora and Debian (including 
its variants such as Ubuntu), though I think Debian has more add-on 
packages available than Fedora. I think David made a good point about 
the dependencies in octave. The 2.9.x series is adding more new 
dependencies to support sparse matrices, so if you want all of the 
features of octave and want it to perform optimally, you need to compile 
more than just octave itself. This makes it increasingly advantageous to 
use a distribution that makes packages already available for all of the 
dependencies, particularly if you intend to install octave on more than 
one computer.

-Quentin



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