1. a library of linear algebra routines - static PIC version LAPACK version 3.0 is a comprehensive FORTRAN library that does linear algebra operations including matrix inversions, least squared solutions to linear sets of equations, eigenvector analysis, singular value decomposition, etc. It is a very comprehensive and reputable package that has found extensive use in the scientific community. Normally one would want to use non-PIC code for static linking. In this case, install lapack-dev. This package is provided for other packages, such as atlas, needing access to PIC versions of the lapack objects in their own build process. From Debian 3.0r0 APT