42 of the Best Free Linux Scientific Software
- A compilation of the more notable Linux scientific software organized into broad subject categories. Each entry has a summary, license information, developer list, system requirements, and a link to the homepage. Last updated 2009-08-10.
Biggles
- A Python module for creating publication-quality 2D scientific plots.
Bioinformatics.Org: Welcome
- International organization which promotes freedom and openness in the field of bioinformatics.
Calc - C-style Arbitrary Precision Calculator
- An interactive calculator which provides for easy, large numeric calculations, but which also can be easily programmed for difficult or long calculations.
Calcoo
- A cross-platform RPN and algebraic scientific calculator. Latest stable release is 1.3.18, 2007-08-18.
Celestia
- Cross-platform planetarium and space simulation software with a database of 100,000+ stars, and a catalogue of more than 100 objects in the solar system.
DINO Homepage
- A real-time 3D visualization program for structural biology data.
EMAN Home Page
- A scientific image processing suite with Python language bindings. Latest stable release is 1.9, 2009-02-11.
Earth System Modeling Framework
- A high-performance, flexible software infrastructure to increase ease of use, performance portability, interoperability, and reuse in climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science applications.
Ensembl Genome Browser
- Publicly-available database of genomic information and a collection of open source tools used for analyzing genomic data from other public databases.
Flounder
- A quick way to visualize regularly spaced 4D data, i.e., a data set that is a function of x, y, z, and time. Latest version is 0.40, 2003-01-14.
Folding@home: Distributed Computing
- The goal of this project to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. Multilingual site.
Free Mag 7 Star Charts
- A downloadable set of high-quality star charts for stars to 7.25 magnitude; licensed under the Creative Commons License.
GMT - The Generic Mapping Tools
- An open source collection of ~60 tools for manipulating geographic and Cartesian data sets (including filtering, trend fitting, gridding, projecting, etc.) and producing Encapsulated PostScript File (EPS) illustrations ranging from simple x-y plots via contour maps to artificially illuminated surfaces and 3-D perspective views. Latest release is 4.4.0, 2009-02-15.
GNU/Linux Aviation HOWTO; Flying with GNU/Linux
- This document provides pointers to software packages that run under GNU/Linux and are useful to pilots (private, commercial or military), airlines, airports or anyone else in the aeronautical domain. (2006) N.B. Some links in the document no longer work, but most of the information is still OK nonetheless. (2009)
GeoGebra
- A cross-platform, interactive, mathematics software that joins geometry, algebra and calculus. Primarily used for education in secondary schools.
Gnuplot.py
- A Python interface to Gnuplot. Latest stable version is 1.8, 2008-05-02. N.B. Gnuplot has a non-free license.
Grace
- A WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System and M*tif. Latest release is 5.1.22, 2008-05-21.
GraphThing
- A tool to create, manipulate and study graphs (mathematical objects). Supports the following languages: in Catalan, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish Chef.
Grig
- A simple, generic Ham Radio control (CAT) program based on the Ham Radio Control Libraries (Hamlib) with the same graphical user interface regardless of which radio is being controlled.
Homepage - www.linuxastronomy.org
- Collaboration between volunteers, teenagers, and astronomers. Projects use Linux and open source software.
I, Librarian - Scientific PDF Article Manager
- A GPLed software application that builds Web-based annotated libraries of scientific PDF articles (up to a 100,000 fully annotated PDF files can be accomodated). This tool is a great boon to researchers who need to collect, organize, and annotate bibliographic references.
INDI - Instrument-Neutral Distributed Interface
- An instrument-neutral distributed interface control protocol that provides backend driver support and automation for a wide range of astronomical devices including telescopes and CCDs. Latest stable release is 0.5, 2007-05-04.
KFLog Portal
- A KDE suite of open source flight planning and analysis programs for gliders.
KSEG - Simulator of Euclidean Geometry
- A free (GPL) interactive geometry program for exploring Euclidean geometry. It runs on UNIX/Linux-based platforms. Excellent multilingual support - available in 15+ languages. Latest release is 0.403, 2006-02-03.
LabPlot Homepage
- A 2D/3D data and functions plotting and visualization program. Also available in German.
MIT Photonic-Bands Home Page
- The MIT Photonic-Bands (MPB) package is a free program for computing the band structures (dispersion relations) and electromagnetic modes of periodic dielectric structures, on both serial and parallel computers. Latest release is 1.4.2, 2003-03-03.
Mathomatic Home Page
- A small, portable Computer Algebra System (CAS) written entirely in the C programming language. It is a console-mode application that does symbolic math and quick calculations in a standard and generalized way.
Matplotlib
- A Matlab-style Python 2D plotting package.
Maxima
- A cross-platform application for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions. It is a descendant of acsyma, the legendary computer algebra system developed in the late 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Also available in Russian and Spanish.
NCBI BLAST Home Page
- BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is one of the most popular open source software tool in bioinformatics.
Nightfall Eclipsing Binary Star Program
- An astronomy application for fun, education, and science. It can produce animated views of eclipsing binary stars, calculate synthetic lightcurves and radial velocity curves, and eventually determine the best-fit model for a given set of observational data of an eclipsing binary star system. It is, however, not able to fry your breakfast egg on yourharddisk. :-( Site also available in German.
OSGeo | Your Open Source Compass
- The Open Source Geospatial Foundation hosts and supports high-quality open source geospatial software projects related to remote sensing, GIS, mapping and advanced image processing.
OSSIM
- A high-performance open source software system for remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS), image processing, and photogrammetry.
Open Visualization Data Explorer
- Open source visualization software package based on IBM's Visualization Data Explorer. Latest release is 4.4.4, 2006-08-30. N.B.: Users must fill out a personal information form to obtain the source code. This software is licensed under the OSI-approved IBM Public License, which is incompatible with the GPL license.
OpenInformatics.org Homepage
- Making scientists more aware of open source software and the benefits to them. Site also contains a science-related software resource list.
PHP Weather
- An application to display the current, local weather on your webpage; available in multiple languages. Current stable release is: 2.2.2, 2004-06-24.
PLplot Home Page
- PLplot is a cross-platform, scientific graphics plotting library. It can be used from within compiled languages such as C, C++, FORTRAN and Java, and interactively from interpreted languages such as Octave, Python, Perl and Tcl. Latest development release is 5.9.2, 2009-01-18.
Partiview
- An industrial strength, interactive, mono- or stereoscopic viewer for 4-dimensional datasets. This application is used by astronomers for interpreting and analyzing large collections of data on the universe.
Ploticus - Welcome
- A cross-platform, non-interactive software package for producing plots, charts, and graphics from data. Latest stable release is 2.4.0, 2008-01-15.
QtiPlot
- A cross-platform data analysis and scientific plotting application; a clone of Origin (Windows proprietary software).
RLplot Home Page
- A cross-platform scientific plotting package.
SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software
- A Free and Open Source software application for studying a huge range of mathematics, including algebra, calculus, elementary to advanced number theory, cryptography, numerical computation, graph theory, and exact linear algebra. It also has interfaces to non-free software (e.g., MAGMA, Maple, Mathematica).
Sailcut CAD
- A cross-platform sail plotting package for designing and developing boat sails into flat panels.
SciPy - Scientific tools for Python
- Includes modules for graphics and plotting, optimization, integration, special functions, signal and image processing.
Science Commons
- The purpose of this organization is to encourage scientific innovation by promoting legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to accessing and sharing scientific information.
ScientificPython
- A collection of Python modules that are useful for scientific computing. Latest stable release is 2.8, 2008-10-28.
Scilab Home Page
- Scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific application. N.B.: free for non-commercial use and commercial use (but code cannot be modified).
SkyView Virtual Observatory
- A virtual observatory on the Net generating images of any part of the sky at wavelengths in all regimes from Radio to Gamma-Ray.
SquidBee
- A project that uses an open hardware design as well as open source software as a platform for wireless remote control and sensing.
Stellarium Astronomy Software
- A cross-platform desktop planetarium, which renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL; its ease-of-use is a big advantage.
The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
- A network of ftp and web servers around the world that store identical, up-to-date, versions of code and documentation for R.
The Gerris Flow Solver
- This is a program for the solution of the partial differential equations describing fluid flow.
The MayaVi Data Visualizer
- A Python-based scientific data visualizer; uses the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) for the graphics.
The OpenScience Project
- Dedicated to writing and releasing free and Open Source scientific software. Software database organized by subject categories.
XTide: Harmonic Tide Clock and Tide Predictor
- XTide is a package that provides tide and current predictions in a wide variety of formats. Graphs, text listings, and calendars can be generated, or a tide clock can be provided on the desktop. Latest release is 2.9.4, 2007-09-03.
XaoS
- A fast interactive real-time fractal zoomer and morpher.
Xplanet
- Xplanet was inspired by Xearth, which renders an image of the earth into the X root window. Xplanet can also render images of the other planets and some satellites. Latest stable release is 1.2.0, 2005-06-16.
Yacas - Yet Another Computer Algebra System
- An easy-to-use general purpose computer algebra system. It uses its own programming language designed for symbolic as well as arbitrary-precision numerical computations. Latest stable release is 1.2.0, 2007-09-21.
Yorick: An Interpreted Scientific Programming Language
- An interpreted programming language for scientific simulations or calculations, postprocessing or steering large simulation codes, interactive scientific graphics, and reading, writing, or translating large files of numbers.