How do you install the latest version of GNU Octave?

Solution 1:

You can add the ppa:devacom/science PPA to install the latest version of Octave (6.4.0, as of January 2021) in Ubuntu 20.04.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:devacom/science
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install octave

Alternatively, you can use flatpak to install the latest version of Octave in Ubuntu 18.04+.

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub org.octave.Octave

Then you can run it from the terminal with the command flatpak run org.octave.Octave (the GUI version is available too).

See this question to create a wrapper script octave, if you don't want to execute the long command flatpak run org.octave.Octave again and again.

The PPA mentioned in this part of answer is inactive since 2018, and it is kept for historical purposes.

You can install the latest stable version of GNU Octave for any supported Ubuntu release:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:octave/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install octave

This PPA is maintained and supported by several Octave developers.

Solution 2:

For octave 3.6.1

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:picaso/octave
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install octave

Yes you can get octave-3.6.3 , open your terminal and paste this

wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-3.6.3.tar.bz2
tar -xvf octave-3.6.3.tar.bz2
cd octave-3.6.3
./configure
 make
 sudo make install 

Hope that helps :D

Solution 3:

Ubuntu 12.04.3 and Octave 3.8.0 with statistics

wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-3.8.0.tar.bz2
tar -xvf octave-3.8.0.tar.bz2
cd octave-3.8.0
sudo apt-get build-dep octave
./configure
make
sudo make install

sudo apt-get install octave-statistics
octave
pkg install -forge io
pkg install -forge statistics
pkg load statistics

Solution 4:

Additionally now I know you can copy the following into the terminal:

wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-version#.tar.gz
tar -xvf /home/username/octave-version#.tar.gz
sudo rm /home/username/octave-version#.tar.gz
cd /home/username/octave-version#
./configure
make
ln -s /home/username/octave-version#/run-octave /usr/local/bin/octave