Genius Mathematics Tool 1.0.25 Is Released
The Genius Mathematics Tool is one of the oldest GNOME projects still around. The latest version has a graphical interface ported to GTK3 even though the version number would indicate that it is a very minor version. Genius is in principle a fully featured general purpose calculator but it is a lot more similar to programs like Matlab and Octave than it is similar to traditional desktop calculators. Genius 1.0.25 may be worth a look if you are a scientist or professor who enjoys doing very advanced math.
GNOME Genius version 1.0.25
Genius was originally released in 1997 which makes it one of the oldest GNOME projects which is still around. It was the first GNOME calculator and it was the default GNOME calculator for many years.
The latest version has a GTK3 port for the graphical user interface by Yavor Doganov. There is also a few bug fixes and new AppendVector, MakeColumnVector, MakeRowVector functions in the 1.0.25 release.
Genius does not look like a typical desktop calculator. It has a "Console" where you can type 5+5 and get 10 and tabs where you can open or create math programs in a simple programming language called Genius Extension Language (GEL). It supports plotting equations and functions in a separate window.
More traditional desktop calculators like qalculate and SpeedCrunch are better choices if you want to do simple math in a user-friendly calculator with buttons you can click on. Genius may be worth a look if you enjoy doing linear algebra, trigonometry and a wide range of more advanced mathematics. Genius was created by mathematics professor Jiří Lebl at the Oklahoma State University with funding from the American National Science Foundation. That should tell you something about the target audience for this calculator: scientists and professors.
The Genius Mathematics Tool homepage is at www.jirka.org/genius.html. The source for the 1.0.25 release is available from download.gnome.org/sources/genius/1.0/ and ftp.5z.com/pub/genius/. All the distributions have a Genius package available so you will be able to install it (but not the latest version just yet) using your distributions package manager.
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