Do Simple Math In Ubuntu And elementary OS With NaSC

Soulver App for Linux

NaSC, abbreviation  Not a Soulver Clone, is a third party app developed for elementary OS. Whatever the name suggests, NaSC is heavily inspired by Soulver, an OS X app for doing maths like a normal person.

elementary OS itself draws from OS X and it is not a surprise that a number of the third party apps it has got, are also inspired by OS X apps. 

Coming back to NaSC, what exactly it means by “maths like a normal person “? Well, it means to write like how you think in your mind. As per the description of the app:

“Its an app where you do maths like a normal person. It lets you type whatever you want and smartly figures out what is math and spits out an answer on the right pane. Then you can plug those answers in to future equations and if that answer changes, so does the equations its used in.”

Still not convinced? Here, take a look at this screenshot.

NaSC Soulver like app for Linux

Now, you see what is ‘math for normal person’? Honestly, I am not a fan of such apps but it might be useful for some of you perhaps. Let’s see how can you install NaSC in elementary OS, Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

Install NaSC in Ubuntu, elementary OS and Mint

There is a PPA available for installing NaSC. The PPA says ‘daily’ which could mean daily build (i.e. unstable) but in my quick test, it worked just fine.

Open a terminal and use the following commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nasc-team/daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nasc

Here is a screenshot of NaSC in Ubuntu 15.04:

NaSC Math apps in Ubuntu

If you want to remove it, you can use the following commands:

sudo apt-get remove nasc
sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:nasc-team/daily

If you try it, do share your experience with it. In addition to this, you can also try Vocal podcast app for Linux from third party elementary OS apps.

About the author
Abhishek Prakash

Abhishek Prakash

Created It's FOSS 11 years ago to share my Linux adventures. Have a Master's degree in Engineering and years of IT industry experience. Huge fan of Agatha Christie detective mysteries 🕵️‍♂️

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