I realize that. But what I said was that I'm not clear on what the 'Wolfram Engine' is and what it cannot do. It doesn't seem like a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free, but I don't actually know.

Or is it that it's missing the Mathematica front end but has a full backend kernel implementation?

Yeah, now I understand your question. Reading the blog post made me think it would actually be a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free.

So I was curious and signed up for a developer license. I got to the confirmation page, which helpfully told me to run "WolframScript" to activate the license. But there was no download link, so I googled around and found this[1] page. They seem to only have packages for Fedora and Debian-based systems, but no biggie. I used `debtap` to convert it to a package that pacman can install, and then, moment of truth...

   $ wolframscript 
   WolframKernel not found.
   Use -configure to set WOLFRAMSCRIPT_KERNELPATH
   Or export WolframKernel=/yourpath/WolframKernel

Uhhh... okay? And where do I get this WolframKernel from? I looked around my Wolfram Account page, and I don't see anywhere I can get this from. Google also doesn't help me here.

So... it seems you probably need a full Mathematica/Wolfram license before you can use this anyway?

Well, that's disappointing.

EDIT: OK, you can actually download it from [2]. My bad.

[1] https://account.wolfram.com/products/downloads/wolframscript

[2] https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

This the correct download page: https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

You get a file `WolframEngine_12.0.0_LINUX.sh` about 1 GiB.

Click the Download button on

https://www.wolfram.com/developer/

Its linked from the article.

I see, thank you. I must have clicked that link to sign up for a developer license, but somehow I don't remember being offered to download the thing.

I feel silly now, but that was pretty confusing.

For me it was being downloaded in the background. Don't remember exactly which button starts the download though.