I recently had the pleasure to try out the Quantian distribution. This is a math-intensive Linux distribution that runs directly off of a CD. For any computer, you can put in the CD, reboot, and you'll be running Quantian Linux in a few minutes (keyboard, mouse, and all else are auto-detected). When done, reboot, remove the CD, and you are back to your current system. Your hard drive will be untouched. It has many math packages I've wanted to try for awhile. Several of them, such as LyX and TeXmacs, have nontrivial set-up procedures. I was delighted to be able to try them all. # Octave, with add-on packages octave-forge, octave-sp, octave-epstk, matwrap and Inline::Octave; # Computer-algebra systems Maxima (including the X11 front-end and emacs support), Pari/GP, GAP, GiNaC and YaCaS; # GSL, the Gnu Scientific Library (GSL) including example binaries; # the QuantLib quantitative finance library including its Python interface; # the Grass geographic information system; # the OpenDX and Mayavi data visualisation systems; # TeXmacs for wysiwyg scientific editing as well as LyX and kile for wysiwyg (La)TeX editing; # various Python modules including Scientific and Numeric Python; # and various other programs such as apcalc, aplus, aribas, autoclass, euler, evolver, freefem, gambit, geg, geomview, ghemical, glpk, gnuplot, gperiodic, gri, gmt, gretl, lp-solve, mcl, mpqc, multimix, rasmol, plotutils, pgapack, pspp, pdl, rcalc, yorick, XLisp-Stat and xppaut. More details are at the website. http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html A free download is at http://www.analytics.washington.edu/downloads/quantian/ It can be bought for $2.29 at http://ulnx.com/product_info.php?products_id=174 More info at http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=quantian I'm still going through the disk. I didn't know there was this much free math software available. --Ed Pegg Jr, www.mathpuzzle.com