'Linux' math program with interactive terminal? Are there any open source math programs out there that have an interactive terminal and that work on linux?
So for example you could enter two matrices and specify an operation such as multiply and it would then return the answer or a error message specifying why an answer can't be computed? I am just looking for something that can perform basic matrix operations and modular arithmetic.

Sage is basically a Python program/interpreter that aims to be an open-source mathematical suite (ala Mathematica and Magma etc.). There are many algorithms implemented as a direct part of Sage, as well as wrapping many other open-source mathematics packages, all into a single interface (the user never has to tell which package or algorithm to use for a given computation: it makes the decisions itself). It includes GP/Pari and maxima, and so does symbolic manipulations and number theory at least as well as them.
It has a command-line mode, as well as a web notebook interface (as an example, a public server run by the main developers).
And, although this might not be relevant since your use-case sounds very simple, the syntax is just Python with a small preprocessing step to facilitate some technical details and allow some extra notation (like [1..4] which expands to [1,2,3,4]), so many people already know it and, if not, learning it is very easy.
As a slight tangent, Sage is actually the origin of the increasingly popular Cython language for writing fast "Python", and even offers an easy and transparent method of using Cython for sections of code in the notebook.
