[Debian-science-sagemath] Installing SageMath on Ubuntu

[Tobias Hansen]

On 02/15/2018 10:14 PM, Samuel Lelièvre wrote:
> Dear debian-science-sagemath,
>
> this question is from someone with very little knowledge about
> Linux, Debian, Ubuntu... but I like to help people install Sage,
> and feel like I am missing a piece of the puzzle when it comes
> to installing on Ubuntu, which as I gather is based on Debian.
>
> Does the packaging of SageMath for Debian provide Ubuntu
> users with a simple way of installing SageMath?
>
> If I understand correctly, there used to be a dedicated Sage PPA
> package for Ubuntu, maintained by Jan Groenewald and made
> available at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
> but this effort was abandoned after SageMath was successfully
> packaged for Debian.
>
> What I am missing is an overview of how Ubuntu users can take
> advantage of the Debian packaging of SageMath.
> - what would be the instructions for installing on Ubuntu?
> - would that work with any version of Ubuntu? or for which?
>
> Thanks in advance for any hints, and if this is not the right place
> to ask, my apologies and please tell me what would be a more
> appropriate place to ask this question.
>
> Kind regards,
> Samuel

Hi Samuel,

generally Ubuntu is just a modified Debian and it's kept in sync for a big part. So in theory our sagemath package should just appear in Ubuntu automatically. In practice sagemath has so many dependencies (and needs specific versions of some of them) that it takes a bit effort to keep the package building on a Ubuntu. Packages in Ubuntu that have changes from Debian are not synced automatically, so package versions can differ. It seems that for Ubuntu 17.04 the Ubuntu developers did this work, for 17.10 not. If you are asking how to use the package on Ubuntu 17.10: That's not easy and I wouldn't recommend it. The package is intended to be used as part of a distribution.

Best,
Tobias