Installing OSCAR 1.7.3 on Windows

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Follow the steps below to install OSCAR v1.7.3. Basic familiarity with using a terminal is assumed.

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Step 1: Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Follow the official instructions to install Ubuntu as your Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). After the installation, you should see the Ubuntu app in your Start menu.

Ensure your WSL subsystem has at least 6GB of free memory for the installation process, and ideally 16GB for optimal performance. The memory available to WSL is less than the total memory on your system. You can adjust the memory allocation using the official WSL configuration instructions, typically via a .wslconfig file (see an example).

💡 Tip: As suggested by Miķelis Emīls Miķelsons, instead of editing a .wslconfig file manually, you can use the “WSL Settings” app on Windows. This GUI tool allows you to set RAM, number of processors, and other resources for WSL easily.

Step 2: Install Julia

1. Open your WSL environment by clicking the Ubuntu app from your start menu.
2. OSCAR requires Julia 1.10 or higher. We recommend installing the latest stable release of Julia by entering the following in a terminal and heeding the instructions it shows:

   curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh
   

Step 3: Install OSCAR

1. In your WSL environment, open the Julia REPL in your terminal by typing the following:

   julia
   

2. Install OSCAR by running the following commands. This may take a while, as OSCAR and its dependencies will be downloaded and installed.

   using Pkg
   Pkg.add("Oscar")
   

Step 4: Start OSCAR

Run using Oscar in the Julia REPL:

julia> using Oscar
  ___   ___   ___    _    ____
 / _ \ / __\ / __\  / \  |  _ \  | Combining and extending ANTIC, GAP,
| |_| |\__ \| |__  / ^ \ |  ´ /  | Polymake and Singular
 \___/ \___/ \___//_/ \_\|_|\_\  | Type "?Oscar" for more information
o--------o-----o-----o--------o  | Documentation: https://docs.oscar-system.org
  S Y M B O L I C   T O O L S    | Version 1.7.3

Optional: Running Tutorials Locally with IJulia

If you would like to run the OSCAR tutorials locally, you can do so using IJulia.

1. Install IJulia (and Jupyter) by running the following command inside your Julia REPL (within your WSL environment):

   using Pkg; Pkg.add("IJulia")
   

   For more details, see the IJulia installation guide. If you encounter issues, you may need to explicitly build IJulia. Troubleshooting information is available on the IJulia troubleshooting page.

2. To run the OSCAR tutorials locally, you need a web browser accessible from your WSL environment (which runs Ubuntu).

   Ubuntu normally installs browsers via Snap, but Snap is disabled in WSL. You may therefore need to install a browser manually (for example, Firefox). You can follow these instructions to install Firefox using the .deb package method.

   Note: As reported by Oliver Clarke, on Windows 11 with WSL version 2 this step may no longer be necessary. If a browser (e.g. Chrome) is set as your default browser on Windows, Jupyter may open automatically in that browser.

3. Download one of the OSCAR tutorials.
4. Start Jupyter by running the following in your Julia REPL (within your WSL environment):

   using IJulia; notebook()
   

5. Your web browser should open the Jupyter interface. In the upper-left corner you should see “Jupyter”; the file explorer appears below it. Locate and open the tutorial notebook you downloaded. If you see a message such as Kernel not found or Kernel error, select a different Julia kernel in the top-right corner of the notebook.