Notices

I was wondering: Is there a Matlab-like mathematical programming environment available for the N810? I remember a nice little app for the Palm, called Lyme, which did some basic programming/plotting using Matlab syntax. There is also the freeware Octave, which is quite good and very compatible with Matlab, but I'm not sure it has been ported to Maemo.

Does anyone know if there is anything like this out there?

Octave is avaliable for OS2006 although I didn't try it on maemo.
On "easy debian" (thank You quole) I installed Octave3.0 and looks like it works.
Worth mentioning - Octave itself is quite resource hungry application, starting it on my desktop at work WinXP@P4 3.0GHz takes about 11 seconds to get the final prompt so don't panic if You'll start it on NIT and forget about what You've done
For example
graphing step response like:
step(tf([1 2],[2 10 5]))
takes about 10secs on my P4.
On the tablet - it was I think more than a minute - but worked.

Try qalculate on easy debian. Makes a heap of things with maths.

http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/

And if you are mostly interessted in High Precision calculations, i would recommend PARI/GP.
No great GUI, but especially for crypto those calculations with 800+ digits precision can come in handy.
I don't know if it is available for NITs, but it would be the first thing i would port if i had a N810.

Bye,
NsN

EDIT:
And for plotting you know about gnuplot, right?

then I would request a port of it to OS 2008.
Actually, my request is for a
1) plotting calculator (preferably with 3D) - I have Mathjinni... and I know there must be better
2) A calculator with support for advanced math (say, Derivatives, integrals, matrices, etc.) - I have seen none for maemo, but a lot for ppc's.

for complex task I tried good-old Derive2.55 under dosbox.
Works OK although I've got some issues with n810 hw keyboard since in dosbox I can't type special chars like [ ] - vectors for example. IMHO Derive - even THIS OLD is amazing piece of software.

While Matlab/Octave will do your request (1), it will not do (2). For (2) you could look at a TI calculator emulator or the newly released sliderule.
You don't need a specific os2008 port of octave--the available version works fine as is. Let me know if you can't find a .deb file; I think I have it saved somewhere. For plotting you'll also need to install gnuplot. Again, let me know if you can't find it and I'll see if I can dig it up. It hasn't been hildonized, so it's a little buggy, but it works.

Try Xcas/Giac, I couldn't get it to compile correctly last year though and haven't tried since. Qalculate looked cool, but iirc I had some issue getting it to compile, glad to see it working

I've found derive 3.05 for dos downloadable as an abandonware, and it works well in dosbox, though I had to use my external bluetooth keyboard to access non alphanumeric chars:
http://vetusware.com/download/DERIVE%203.05/?id=4327