Octave 6 is now available via conda forge

[moorepants]

See: conda-forge/octave-feedstock#45

If that package stays up-to-date it would be nice to support octave via it, but I also don't know what that means for all of the octave-forge packages. I think we install octave + octave-forge packages via apt now and we'd want to make sure we can offer the same set of tools. Just thought I'd note this.

[TimStewartJ]

I took a quick look into it but it looks like providing all of the packages would be a slight issue. Installing Octave via conda-forge means we can't use apt to quickly install all of its packages at once. We would have to find some other way to install them, and it looks like all of the packages would have to be listed out manually.

[moorepants]

Ok, let's stick with the apt packages then (for now).

[moorepants]

It's possible that there is an PPA that provides octave 6 and octave forge packages for ubuntu 18.04. We'd want to make sure that was a reliable source though. That's another option.