So I'm sitting here doing math homework and I want to make sure that integral(cos(nx)) is equal to sin(nx)/n, as I believe it to be. Now I could use my incredibly expensive calculator (and probably should), but I'm sitting in front of a computer, so I decide to look for a program like matlab that'd do the job. So I run a search and run into some university page that says what they have installed on their unix system. Matlab, Mathematica, and Scilab, which it lists as open source. I figured it might be something that I'd have to find, download, compile, find I have missing packages, mess around for a few hours, then give up. But just in case, I go to my terminal and type "urpmi scilab<tab>" and sure enough, it gives me the choice to download scilab-2.6xx. I was really amazed at how easy that was. Seriously, if all you've ever used is redhat, give mandrake a try. Its really neat. Its contrib sources make it really easy to get unsupported 3rd party programs, and they encourage people to compile their favorite packages and put them in there. Redhat doesn't usually do anything like that. Then if you want, you can check out plf.zarb.org, which has all the latest in not quite legal linux programs available for mandrake too. Its not all subversive evil stuff. There's things like dvd players, mp3 encoders, etc. in there. Try the German mirror. Its really fast for me (100KByte/s) here in LA.
-Eric Hattemer
