Using MathCad on Linux

Chris Clarke

7/9/09

My machine is an Acer Aspire One with 160Gb HD, 1.5Gb Ram - runs Fedora 10 with the Gnome Desktop For Fedora 10, you install MathCad by using a program called WINE that allows you to use some Windows programs on a Linux machine. 1. Opening a terminal, type 'su' and your root superuser password. 2. Next type 'yum install wine'* and hit enter. Type 'Y' to any questions, it will take a few mins to install WINE. 3. When WINE has installed, load the MathCad disk into your drive, and open it in your file Manager (Thunar, Dolphin etc). Click on the MathCad folder, scroll down to 'setup.exe' and right click to bring up a menu. 4. Select 'Open with Wine Windows Program loader' and then go through the normal steps for a MathCad install. Remember that the 'company' is 'The Open University'. 5. Go to your Windows machine, C:\Windows\Fonts, and copy all the fonts onto a memory stick or CD-RW. On your Linux machine, copy these fonts to: \(YOUR NAME)\.wine\drive_C\windows\fonts. You may have to select 'show hidden files' in your linux file manager. 6. On Fedora, you click the 'Fedora' icon*, opening up the main menu, and go to 'Other'. DON'T open Mathcad yet! 7. Click on 'Wine Configuration', and add an application. Open Program Files, Mathsoft, Mathcad 2001i Professional, mathcad.exe. On the 'Applications' tab, click on mathcad.exe to highlight it. 8. Go to the 'Graphics' tab, and select 'emulate a virtual desktop'. Best to use your screen resolution for this. Then click 'OK' to close Wine Configuration. 9. Now go to Fedora*, Other, and click on 'MathCad 2001i professional' and it should open in it's own desktop. When you need to exit MathCad, this virtual desktop will also close. You can put on another workspace as well should you wish. MathCad mostly works fine on Linux, with just a couple of niggles. 1. Can't find the Help files or get them to install. Tend to use the web for help. 2. On my Acer Aspire one, MathCad will not do 3D surface plots - it crashes. On Windows, the solution to this was to turn off the graphics hardware acceleration. All 'graphics' are done by the CPU in MathCad, rather than the graphics card. Not worked out how to do this in Linux yet. *this may be a different command depending on your version of Linux.