Mathematica

Mathematica is a commercial program used in scientific, engineering and mathematical fields. Here we explain how to install it.

Installation

Since Mathematica is a non-free application and upgrades may incur costs, this section lists instructions for different available versions.

Mathematica 6

Mounting iso

One way to mount the Mathematica .iso is to create a /media/iso mount directory and add the following line to the fstab:

/location/of/mathematica.iso /media/iso iso9660 exec,ro,user,noauto,loop=/dev/loop0   0 0

Now you can mount it with:

# mount /media/iso

Running the Installer

You can start the installer by navigating to:

/Unix/Installer

Run MathInstaller with:

sh ./MathInstaller

Note: If you do not place the "sh" in front, then you will get an error about a bad interpreter.

Fonts

Add the directories containing Type1 and BDF fonts to your FontPath.

Mathematica 7

Mathematica 7 is much easier to install.

tar xf Mathematica-7.0.1.tar.gz
cd Unix/Installer
./MathInstaller

Follow instructions.

For KDE users, the Mathematica icon may appear in the Lost & Found category. To solve this, execute the following as root:

# ln -s /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged /etc/xdg/menus/kde-applications-merged

Mathematica 8

An issue with Mathematica 8 is a reproducible crash when performing WolframAlpha[] functions. By default, Mathematica is configured to detect the system's proxy settings when configuring how to connect to the internet to fetch data. A "bug" exists that will eventually crash Mathematica when the calling library is used. A workaround is to avoid this library call altogether by configuring Mathematica to "directly connect" to the internet. (Edit > Preferences > Internet Connectivity > Proxy Settings). This bug has been reported to Wolfram.

Mathematica 10

Install mathematica^AUR (need historical version). The Mathematica_10.XX.YY_LINUX.sh installation script is required; you will need to download this separately from Wolfram.com, your university, etc. You will also need an activation key.

Mathematica 11

Install mathematica^AUR. Obtain Mathematica_11.XX.YY_LINUX.sh from Wolfram Research, along with an activation key, and save it to the package build directory. Successful install may throw non-critical errors: xdg-icon-resource, mkdir, xdg-desktop-menu. For more details see the mathematica PKGBUILD file.

Mathematica 11 automatically creates a document folder 'Wolfram Mathematica' in $UserDocumentsDirectory, which is set by Mathematica according to XDG user directories.

Mathematica 12

Make sure the packages avahi and inetutils are installed before proceeding with the installation.
Start/enable avahi-daemon.service which is required for the installation.
Run the hostname command and make sure it returns the hostname before starting the installation. Failure to do so results in the installation failing right at the end.
Get the installation file Mathematica_12.XX.YY_LINUX.sh from Wolfram Research and save it to the build directory (e.g Downloads folder).
Make Mathematica_12.XX.YY_LINUX.sh executable.
Start installation using the command ./Mathematica_12.XX.YY_LINUX.sh as root and follow instructions.

Note: running as superuser enables the installation to write to /usr/local/Wolfram/ and /usr/local/bin/.

Troubleshooting

Missing symbols

If you have font rendering problems where certain symbols do not show up (i.e. / appears as a square), try this solution. It also states the issue is fixed with Mathematica version 9.

Try having applications use anti-aliasing. For KDE: System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts > Use anti-aliasing (Enabled)

HiDPI / Retina Screens

If you have a HiDPI screen, such as an Apple Retina display, and the main text in Mathematica looks small when you open it, this can be fixed:

Go to Edit → Preferences
From the Advanced tab, click Open Option Inspector
In the tree on the right, go to Formatting Options → Font Options → Font Properties
Change the value for "ScreenResolution" to double its current setting, e.g. 72 → 144. You can also use xdpyinfo | grep resolution to get a more precise number (which will need to be doubled).

Conflicts with system libraries

The Mathematica package includes a number of its own libraries, located in <INSTALL_DIR>/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux-x86-64. They may lead to some compatibility issues and fallback to the system versions of some of these libraries may be necessary.

Symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var

Force Mathematica to use the system version of the freetype library.

# cd <INSTALL_DIR>/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux-x86-64
# mv libfreetype.so.6 libfreetype.so.6.old

Mathematica/11.3/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux-x86-64/libz.so.1: version `ZLIB_1.2.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/libpng16.so.16)

Force Mathematica to use the system version of the zlib library.

# cd <INSTALL_DIR>/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux-x86-64
# mv libz.so.1 libz.so.1.old