No decent linux calculator?!??

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11-25-2009
MK27

No decent linux calculator?!??

Now here is a very sorry state of affairs. I was looking at C_ntua's comments in another thread, and sat down to do a little math to get a better understanding of it, and realized that "bc -l", the standard GNU CLI calculator, has an impoverished set of trig functions -- like, no tan(). It struck me that the only trigonometry I have done with the computer I've done in a C programming context, using the math library. But I don't need to write a program to check out a few values.

So I thought, big woop, probably there is a nice graphical scientific calculator packaged in my distro. At first, I thought I had made a spelling mistake:

[root~/perl] yum search trigonometry
Warning: No matches found for: trigonometry
No Matches found

Kind of strange. Then I remembered using xcalc in the past, which was part of a base X windows install and had trig functions. Not anymore -- xcalc is dead!

So I headed online. I found three candidates, they are all out of date, so neither the source nor a binary would do me any good:

xbc -- uses gtk 1 (current version is 2)
qmcalc -- uses Qt 3 (current version is 4)
Archimede

That last one is pretty interesting, take a look at this screen shot:

Archimede: calcolatrice RPN e algebrica

Okay, I thought, terrific, this almost looks like fun. The binary was compiled against an ancient version of X, unfortunately, but they had a sourceforge site. Guess what the losers who created and abandoned Archimede did? They created a "source package" (presumably so they could have a free Sourceforge page) and put the same unusable binary in it.

You know what this adds up to: there is no currently maintained GUI scientific calculator for the linux platform. Please please tell me I am wrong and point me to the download.

Maybe good news for someone tho. Here's a nice project that could easily be managed by one person, you just need to learn some gtk. And if you do a decent job, the some distro (or all of them) will probably pick it up.

In the meantime, I guess I'm using gcc :p
11-25-2009
brewbuck

tan(x) = sin(x) / cos(x)
11-25-2009
MK27

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewbuck

tan(x) = sin(x) / cos(x)

Sure, and I suppose

sin(x) = tan(x)*cos(x)

but so the people who wrote bc were that lazy? And then they figure the user can just do this all the time. Tch.

I guess I could get a real calculator for like $5 or something anyway. Computers are more for stuff like this:

http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/polyxmass

which is in my distro. But hey, why not a decent calculator for those occasions when you forgot yours, or the battery dies or something? Does anyone intend this OS to be used for anything but servers? Imagine sitting in your school's computer lab and going look ma, no calculator.
11-25-2009
cyberfish

I use gcalctool. Came with my distro. Works just like a scientific calculator, and certainly has tan().
11-25-2009
MK27

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberfish

I use gcalctool. Came with my distro. Works just like a scientific calculator, and certainly has tan().

thanks cyberfish! that search led me straight to "speedcrunch" which installed fine.

Kind of funny neither of those showed up before in my search...

Let me google that for you

there's more stuff there tho, than when I went looking with the word "trigonometry" -- I guess all the pages are mostly graphical and people don't understand SEO basics...
11-25-2009
cyberfish

Or maybe they assumed they don't need to advertise having trig capabilities.
11-25-2009
MK27

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberfish

Or maybe they assumed they don't need to advertise having trig capabilities.

point -- I always aim low :p
11-25-2009
cyberfish

Speedcrunch looks really nice! They even advertise usability from keyboard. One thing I hated about gcalctool is that it's virtually impossible to use from the keyboard.
11-25-2009
cyberfish

BTW, Octave is pretty nice, too. I usually use it for graphing and solving linear systems.
11-25-2009
Mario F.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberfish

Speedcrunch looks really nice! They even advertise usability from keyboard.

Indeed it does. I love it exactly over that. I even hide the keypad. And it can even be used as a ticker tape calculator since if you start the next line with an operator, the variable ans gets automatically added.

Attachment 9459
11-26-2009
zacs7

`calc` all the way. What C programmer wouldn't want a C-style arbitrary precision calculator?

Attachment 9460
11-26-2009
fronty

GUI: kcalc
CLI without fancy stuff: dc
CLI with fancy stuff: don't bother, grab your calculator.
12-03-2009
MTK

Qalculate! is pretty good.

EDIT: I just got SpeedCrunch to try, it's a very nice concept compared to most calculator applications that try to emulate a physical calculator.

And I saw a pretty funny testimonial in the sidebar:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedCrunch website

SpeedCrunch may sound like a breakfast cereal, but it's actually a very powerful open-source calculator.
12-03-2009
Shakti

I have made it a habit to use a haskell interpreter for basic math stuff (ghci). Only downside is that you cant reuse previous answer but need to type the number in again.
12-03-2009
MTK

That reminded me that the python interpreter makes a pretty good calculator too, and you can get history with the up key.
12-14-2009
jeffcobb

Check out extcalc...it seems pretty versatile...on Deb-based system apt-get install extcalc...

Extcalc

I don't know how the rest of you are getting the images to embed but here is a screen shot on my server...

J
12-14-2009
Mario F.

If you go to Advanced Mode when replying, you have a button under Aditional Options called Managed Attachments, conveniently badly named and out of view.

The image will then be displayed at the end of your post.
12-14-2009
abachler

Quote:

Originally Posted by MK27

But hey, why not a decent calculator for those occasions when you forgot yours, or the battery dies or something?

Do they even make scientific calculators that don't have a solar panel ? I haven't seen a non-solar calculator since the 80's.
12-14-2009
laserlight

Quote:

Originally Posted by abachler

Do they even make scientific calculators that don't have a solar panel ? I haven't seen a non-solar calculator since the 80's.

My school bookshop sold one from Sharp in the late 90's. I bought the solar panel version instead :)
12-14-2009
Dae

My T86 graphing calculator or whatever from 2004 took like 4 AA batteries or something, but they didn't die often.
12-15-2009
jeffcobb

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mario F.

If you go to Advanced Mode when replying, you have a button under Aditional Options called Managed Attachments, conveniently badly named and out of view.

The image will then be displayed at the end of your post.

Cheers mate; will know better next time.

Jeff
12-15-2009
abachler

Here is the one I carry, I actually preferred the older model, which was lighter and had a better key layout and did HEX, OCT, and Binary conversions, but they don't make that model anymore.
12-16-2009
Epy

Quote:

Originally Posted by abachler

Do they even make scientific calculators that don't have a solar panel ? I haven't seen a non-solar calculator since the 80's.

The HP 48 series sucks too much energy to use a solar panel :D