A FriCAS Quick-Start Installation Guide for Mac OS: A Mathematica Alternative
FriCAS is a free and powerful computer algebra system that can be scripted using Lisp. It is a good alternative for Mathematica or Matlab, and is said to be more powerful and correct than Maxima.
Open a terminal window, and execute the command DISPLAY=:0 fricas. You should be greeted by the documentation for FriCAS in a new window, and the live prompt where you can start using FriCAS in the terminal.
Figure 1: The interactive window of the graph depicting the function input in to the FriCAS live session in the terminal of Mac OS.
Then, execute the newly available function fricas. This should open an interactive session. Note that you should run emacs as follows to enable graphics in FriCAS: DISPLAY=:0 emacs.
Figure 2: FriCAS running in a live session in Emacs on Mac OS, finding the series expansion of a function and its derivative, and outputting the result in rendered LaTeX.
