Open Source
A guy called Richard M Stalman had this idea that software should be free as in freedom (check out faif.pdf). A bit too long for a casual glance, right? The gist is that "normal" software these days is closed and proprietary. This means that no-one can modify the programs without permission of the authors. The formats we use are also closed and proprietary, meaning that it is nearly impossible to open the files we all need to read (.doc is not a global standard).
The real name for the kind of software that Stallman had in mind is Free Software, but Open source is used a lot, and more accessible.
This website is hosted on a server running Ubuntu (a free operating system based on the Linux kernel), using Apache. The documents you will find on this website are all readable by anyone (and not just using Acrobat reader).
There are several places to get open source software. On campus, there are several mirrors of open source software. Check out the FTP site ftp://ftp.up.ac.za/mirrors . OpenOffice is a free software replacement for Microsoft office. Firefox is the best browser out there and also happens to be free. It can also be used together with Thunderbird to replace Microsoft Outlook (mail and calendar).
Of course, there are tons of free software titles out there. Try looking at freshmeat.org or sourceforge.org when you need software. You'd be surprised how many of the programs that you would pirate are available for free. Some software often runs better than those you would have pirated.
Open source downloads
The table below contains some commonly used software and suggestions for open source replacements. Most downloads are available locally and won't use up your internet credits when you're on campus.
| Office software | ||
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Office | OpenOffice can read and write Microsoft Office files and export to PDF natively. The suite includes great tools for writing documents, a spreadsheet and a cool drawing program to draw diagrams with | |
| (Microsoft Word) | TeX (MiKTeX) is a powerful alternative for writing technical documents. | |
| Text Editor | ||
| Crimson Editor | A windows based text editor that is feature rich and highly configurable. It supports a number of languages including C/C++, Java, LaTeX, Matlab, Octave, Perl and Python. Currently it is maintained by the Emerald Editor team. | EE homepage |
| Computational tools | ||
| Matlab | Octave is the smallest of the Matlab clones. Simple programs should run without problems in Matlab. | |
| Python with the Scilab package is also a very compelling alternative to Matlab. | Scipy homepage | |
| Simulink | Scilab has similar functionality to Simulink as well as Matlab, but Scilab programs may not run in Matlab. Scilab 3 has a lot of added featues and may be more compatible with your Matlab programs (still no running of Scilab programs in Matlab though) | |
| HyVisual is like Simulink. It includes support for Finite State Machine descriptions of models and a lot more. You can check out the manual here. Note that you need Java Runtime Environment to get this to work. | ||
| S+ | R is similar to S+ (no, really). It does more statistical operations, but is not Matlab-like at all | |
| Symbolic computation | ||
| Maple / Mathematica | Maxima is a full-featured Computer Algebra System. Many of Mathematica and Maple's functionality is derived from Maxima. | |
| Browsers and Mail clients | ||
| Internet Explorer | Mozilla can be used as a replacement for Internet Explorer and Outlook. It imports mail files from Outlook mail and has a lot of unique features like tabbed browsing and support for mouse gestures. | |
| Firefox (also by the Mozilla Foundation) is a quick and easy browser with loads of functionality. Why suffer when you can... well... not suffer? | ||
| Microsoft Outlook | Mozilla can be used as a replacement for Outlook. | |
| Thunderbird (also by the Mozilla Foundation) can be used to replace Outlook. It enables the download of mail to an external source (like a flash disk) for later viewing. Thunderbird is a very popular mail client on campus. | ||
| Archiving software | ||
| WinZip | 7zip is a small program able to deal with all the popular archive types (.zip/.rar/.ace) and more (.7z/.tar). Lightweight and free. | |
Several of these applications are also available on the GnuwinIICD. This is a collection of free software, available for download here.
