Free Scientific Software for Developing World? 212
FlashBoltzmann asks: "I'm a physics student in the US working with a group
of physicists, mostly from Africa, who are interested in helping their colleagues on the continent obtain free software for
scientific and educational use. Often, many science
departments in Africa have little or almost nonexistent
funding to purchase new software packages, especially for
scientific research or education. Some know of the free
software available but say it takes up large amounts of time
over often slow internet connections to find and obtain it. I am asking for any recommendations on freeware or open source software, for any operating system, that anyone knows about. We are looking at the Debian version of Linux for a lot of the great software
that comes with it but resources for MS Windows would be
helpful as well."
"Free educational software of any level is appreciated though we prefer college and graduate level software. Also, field specific software is great, e.g. software for condensed matter physics. Eventually we'll probably combine the software on CDs to be distributed to these scientists. Any help is appreciated especially with programs that perform simulations, mathematical and statistical analysis and plotting, compilers, lab software, etc. The users of the software will most likely be physicists or mathematicians."
The one to begin with... (Score:3, Informative)
This typesetting program was originally aimed at the scientist. I don't know of any other software that produces nicer documents.
An old math favorite (Score:5, Informative)
Open Channel Software (Score:3, Informative)
I recall
Try NA/European physicists & mathematicians (Score:4, Informative)
I worked for a little while in a government research library, and about half the people in the building were both scientists and programmers. They developed a lot of their own tools, and most of them were coding for some *nix, many on Linux.
They didn't care about other people getting their code. I would expect universities to be the same way.
As for bandwidth, that's much less of a problem now with CD burners. I'm assuming your Third World people have CD-ROMs, but given that, if you can talk to some First World scientists & get them to burn and ship, it might well be cheaper.
SAL: Scientific Applications on Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Netlib and more (Score:5, Informative)
It's best in linear algebra (matrix problems etc) but there's other good stuff in there - FFT routines, statistical stuff, some deep mathematics, and more... Also, not free, but good, is the standby Numerical Recipes book, which includes source code for a large variety of uses, particularly solution of nonlinear optimization problems.
Other stuff is available free from the supercomputer centers - at least they used to give stuff away free, though NCSA [ncsa.edu] at least seems to have tried to make money off their things lately...
astro software & some stats too. (Score:3, Informative)
For professional astronomy software, I recommend http://star-www.rl.ac.uk/
Some nice but steep stats software in the R project http://www.r-project.org/
And you can use Octave & gnuplot for basic maths. (admittedly not as good as mathematica,matlab or some other maths package.)
This URL http://www.seul.org/sci/seul-sci10.html has a review of linux & GPL packages that are useful to scientists.
It is also probably worth asking some of the software vendors if they would like to donate something, as really, you never know! (if the cause is good...)
Good luck!
fz
Physics Analysis Workstation. (Score:3, Informative)
Great for graphical representation, and statistics. Released under GPL.
I remember using it about three years ago under Red Hat for reconstruting cosmic ray showers. Can't see any possible problems with Debian...
It was great for what I was doing.
Matt.
scientific apps for linux (Score:1, Informative)
scientific applications for linux:
http://sal.kachinatech.com/sal1.shtml
for ee:
http://www.drzyzgula.org/bob/electronics/linux.
scilab (math&calc. like matlab):
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scilab/
texmacs (kickass easy wysiwig scientific document editor):
http://www.texmacs.org
(and also has a lot of links to other scientific software)
scigraphica:
http://scigraphica.sourceforge.net/
linux apps
http://www.linuxapps.com/?page=category&categor
Theorem proving software (Score:2, Informative)
See: http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/formal-methods/hol. html [ox.ac.uk] amongst other pages.
Stuff that I use (Score:2, Informative)
The GNU scientific library (GSL) can be found here: http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/
Intel Image Processing Library (C): http://developer.intel.com/software/products/perf
Intel Signal Processing Library (C): http://developer.intel.com/software/products/perf
VTK is an *extensive* visualization toolkit (C++): http://public.kitware.com/VTK/
useful research programs ( and libraries ) (Score:2, Informative)
For graphing:
For Numerical Analysis:
Check out the Scientific Computing FAQ: [mathcom.com] which I've been having trouble reaching so you might want to try the Google cache [google.com] of it.
GAP -- Computational Group Theory and more (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to use GAP for research or teaching and can't download it (we've had people whose bandwidth is too low, and people whose countries do not allow arbitrary internet downloads for political/religious reasons) let us know (mail one of the addresses on the Web site) and we can usually manage to send a CD.
Steve Linton
Seriously... check out Freshmeat.net (Score:5, Informative)
K-3D modeling, rendering and animation software (Win32 as well):
http://midas.psi.ch/
Isotopic Pattern Calculator (Link may be wrapped):
http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/MathNat/pc1-AK_We
MayaVi (Visualization Software):
http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/
MIDAS (Data acq software for particle physics):
http://midas.psi.ch/
GraphThing (Graph Theory tool):
http://members.optushome.com.au/davidsymonds/gt
GNU TeXmacs (Technical writing tool, great for technical docs with formuli):
http://www.texmacs.org/
There are 130 projects on Freshmeat, which is probably just the "tip of the iceberg".
I am not a troll.
Re:Physics Analysis Workstation - ROOT (Score:2, Informative)
It's aimed at the Particle Physics community but is currently in use in a wide range of fields from Astronomy to banking!
Oh yes, runs on Linux and Windows...
TISEAN (Score:2, Informative)
It does excellent job on its part. There is also some documentation on the site, including one of the creators' Ph. D. thesis that explains some of the theory behind the software. On Linux it requires gcc and GNU Fortran complier to compile (compilation is pretty straightforward).
I also found GNU awk [gnu.org] extremely useful at numerical data analysis. You also would want to include Python [python.org] and NumPy [pfdubois.com] - python extension for numerical computations.
HTH
Alex
Things I use at work... (Score:5, Informative)
Geomview for visualization (Score:0, Informative)
2. For volume rendering i recommend VTK [kitware.com] the visualization toolkit. A bit high on overhead required to use it, but quite powerful when you learn. In addition to volume rendering, supports isosurfaces (via marching cubes), segmentation algorithms, and many other image classifications. Delauney triangulation, and many of the elements needed for production visualization pipelines.
3. BLAS [netlib.org] and LAPACK [netlib.org] are absolutely essential. Basic Linear Algebra and Linear Algebra subroutines for everything from optimized matrix-matrix operations to Singular Value Decomposition and cholesky factorization of band diagonal symmetric yadayada. I use this stuff daily and the LAPACK subroutines would be one of the first things I would compile in a new environment. The LAPACK subs call BLAS subs. Note that I have these in fortran but called from C/C++. I dont know if they have been ported to C yet.
4. Stay away from those fancy "data explorer" deals. Complete waste of time. Chances are with a little more work you can do a better job, in a smaller package, with a *ton* less overhead by writing a bit of code. Learn a command line parser (you could prolly use getopt) and write your own library. I recommend brewing up 1D 2D and 3D storage classes that are reusable via C++ classes. For 2D/3D we use files with an ascii header and binary data, and have written utilities to do math on or between them. We also spent the time to write our own plotting software direct to postscript, so I have not had to struggle with the crap that is the freely available plotting software. GNU plot is simply pathetic. And if you pay for something like NCAR it is at least as bad but costs a hell of a lot more.
5. As far as those fancy environments go, I have used AVS, KHOROS, IBM explorer, and the SGI IRIS explorer. One of these that was free and probably the easiest to use is now not free (khoros). The IBM data explorer is also free now, but it is a total piece of crapola in my not so humble opinion.
6. Finally. Get the numerical algorithms book for your fav language. You wont regret it.
Re:Netlib and more (Score:5, Informative)
some of the resources I use:
Netlib (www.netlib.org [netlib.org]) -- Yes, it's mostly Fortran, but that's a good thing! Just use f2c (easy to find) and translate to C if that's what you want. Don't underestimate the power of decades-old programs -- old == widely used and well-tested.
StatLib (lib.stat.cmu.edu [cmu.edu]) -- Collection of statistical software, in various languages, including C, Fortran, and S.
SAL, Scientific Applications on Linux (sal.kachinatech.com [kachinatech.com]) -- a very large collection of links.
Freshmeat (www.freshmeat.net [freshmeat.net]) -- Not scientifically oriented, but there is much scientific stuff there, along with all kinds of miscellany.
Octave (www.octave.org [octave.org]) -- A package for matrix manipulations, similar to Matlab, but free. Useful for all kinds of problems.
R (www.r-project.org [r-project.org]) -- An implementation of the S language for statistics, but also useful for general problems, similar to Octave. S+ is a commercial implementation of S.
Well, that ought to be enough to get started. To echo something other posters have mentioned -- don't even bother with Windows software. If your budget is tight, save your money for hardware, don't waste it on the MS tax.
a very good site ... (Score:1, Informative)
I think the official site is at http://sal.kachinatech.com/ [kachinatech.com].
many applications there , not all free though
octave and matlab (student version) (Score:3, Informative)
since i installed my student version of Matlab at home, i have used less my Octave. Matlab also can be bought at academic prices, which are still too expensive for cash-strapped academia.
as for linux vs. windows, if you have to leave you computer on for 10 days for a simulation, then linux stability is a nice bonus...
lotsa *nix sci freeware in french (Score:3, Informative)
Its in French... but then again the majority of my African friends speak it.... there is a lot in there
Sciences et ingénierie
Scientific Applications on Linux http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM/
Index très complet d'applications scientifiques et professionnelles (gratuites, shareware ou commerciales) qui tournent sous Linux.
Statistiques
fiasco http://www.fsf.org/software/fiasco/index.html
xldlas http://a42.com/~thor/xldlas/
MacAnova http://www.stat.umn.edu/~gary/macanova/macanova.h
R http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/R/contents.html
Calcul formel
MuPAD http://www.mupad.de
Maple http://www.maplesoft.com/
Mathematica http://www.wolfram.com/
Macsyma http://www.macsyma.com/
Magma http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au
Macaulay2 http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/
Singular http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/~zca/Singular/
Analyse numérique
Scilab http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scilab/
Matlab http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/mlover.s
Octave http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/
Ecology (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.cbs.umn.edu/populus/
it teaches some of the basic differential equations, some cellular automata, an "interaction engine" wherein you can enter your own diff eq's and view their outputs (only 2 or 3 can be viewed simultaneously), and a bunch of other things...
it is currently being developed in Java, and is available for all operating systems (that have Java)
check it out! it's "fun for the whole family!" you will see models that you have done in your school years (simple population growth) and a lot you probably haven't.
mupad (Score:4, Informative)
It's some sort of mathematica lookalike, superior in some cases and they have free versions.
It's been a while since I used it, but it was great.
IRAF for Astronomy/Image Processing (Score:4, Informative)
Although aimed at astronomy, it would be useful general image processing (particularly good at automating procedures over many images).
Re:Netlib and more (Score:2, Informative)
Why is it that whenever this topic comes up, everybody always talks about Octave and gnuplot as if these are the only things available?
If you want a self contained program that runs on multiple platforms, take a look at Euler [ku-eichstaett.de]. This is about as close as it gets to being a MatLab clone.
Numerical Python (Score:3, Informative)
Here are a few more links:
The Python website: http://www.python.org
The Scientific Python Project: http://www.scipy.org
Cheers,
-DA
A few favourites we use (Score:2, Informative)
There's plenty more where they came from. Most distrbutions come with a lot of these things anyway. These are mainly analysis or document tools, there's plenty of other things for both these areas and any other which plenty of other posters have shown. I've written a little guide [liv.ac.uk] for my local group. Some of it's out of date (and some of it's wrong but I have better things to fix) but it does have a list of common tools we use. And, of course, SAL [kachinatech.com] is a pretty comprehensive database of unix tools. HTH.