Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Project

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

> >  It seems that Sage is going to connect with OLPC.  If all those kids do their
> >  math using Sage, I think there is no way around Sage anymore.  Sage can already
> >  do many many things better than Axiom, I suppose, so we need really good
> >  reasons to continue with Axiom, I think.  Maybe I should just redo the guessing
> >  package in Python and be done with it?  Some time ago I said that I'll quit
> >  Axiom if there are less than twenty contributors by the end of 2008.  However,
> >  it seems to me that the number of algebra contributors actually went down!

Well, before you get your hopes up on the OLPC XO, let someone who owns 
two of them (me) inject a bit of realism into the discussion. The XO in 
its current platform has a 433 MHz AMD Geode processor -- essentially a 
low-power Athlon, 256 MB of RAM and a 1 GB flash disk, about 35 percent 
of which is full when you load the base software. I do have both R and 
wxMaxima running on them very well, but I don't think Sage would run 
without a *lot* of shoe-horning. And if you run out of RAM, there is 
*no* swapper and Linux just kills your process. :)

Is it a good platform for learning high-school math? I don't think so. 
You need something with more horsepower.