Free scientific software for linux

Scientific Linux is a Linux release put together by various labs and universities around the world. Scientific Linuxs primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimentors.
The base Scientific Linux distribution is basically Enterprise Linux, recompiled from source.
Our main goal for the base distribution is to have everything compatible with Enterprise, with only a few minor additions or changes. An example of of items that were added are Pine, and OpenAFS.
Enhancements:
- Scientific Linux 5.0 i386 is now available." Some of the extra applications include: "CFITSIO - a library of C and FORTRAN subroutines for reading and writing data files in FITS; FUSE - an implementation of a fully functional file system in a userspace program; Graphviz - graph visualization tools; IceWM - a lightweight window manager; Intel wireless firmware, MadWiFi and NdisWrapper; Java; MP3 support; OpenAFS; R - a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics....

The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. It is free software under the GNU General Public License.
GNU Scientific Library provides a wide range of mathematical routines such as random number generators, special functions and least-squares fitting. There are over 1000 functions in total with an extensive test suite.
Installation Instructions:
GSL follows the standard GNU installation procedure. To compile GSL you will need an ANSI C-compiler. After unpacking the distribution the Makefiles can be prepared using the configure command,
./configure
You can then build the library by typing,
make
Both static and shared versions of the libraries will be compiled by default. Compilation of shared libraries can be turned off by specifying the `--disable-shared option to `configure, e.g.
./configure --disable-shared
If you encounter problems building the library try using the above option, because some platforms do not support shared libraries.
For notes about problems with specific platforms and compilers see the next section of this file (below).
An extensive test suite is available. After compiling the library with "make", it can be invoked with "make check" at the top level. The test output should be directed to a file rather than a terminal, with the command,
make check > log 2>&1
to allow any errors to be examined in detail. By default, only test failures are shown. To see the complete output, set the environment variable GSL_TEST_VERBOSE=1.
If you run the tests and get some failures, please see the notes on platform specific problems below. If you find failures that are not mentioned, please report them to bug-gsl@gnu.org.
The library can be installed using the command,
make install
The default installation directory prefix is /usr/local. Consult the "Further Information" section below for instructions on installing the library in another location or changing other default compilation options.
Enhancements:
- This release adds new support for non-symmetric eigensystems, basis splines, and Mathieu functions.
- It has fixes for all bugs reported since the last release.

Ksetiwatch is a monitoring tool for the Seti@home distributed computing project, which searches for signals of extraterrestrial life. It displays the state of the Seti@home client(s) running on your computer or in your local network, and logs/manages completed work units and interesting signals.

In addition, Ksetiwatch features a skymap that displays all work units processed, a graphical display of scientific data (gaussians, pulses, and triplets), a dock icon with detailed status information about a client, the option to start/stop the SETI@home clients, and much more.

SetiContainer is a C++ class that allows convenient access to all the information in the state files of a SETI@home client. It periodically examines these files and updates its own data members accordingly.

Other programs can use this class to extract information about the progress of the client, the signals found, or the work unit being processed. Additional functions offer more advanced info (like the amount of TeraFlops in a work unit, estimated time of completion, etc.). The SetiContainer class is based on the Qt toolkit, and extensively uses Qts Signal/Slot .

SWT component for OpenSceneGraph is a SWT component that allows you to display an OpenSceneGraph.

SWT component for OpenSceneGraph is know as libosgswt. libosgswt is the initial component included inside the josgviewer set of libraries.

The OpenSceneGraph is an open source high peformance 3D graphics toolkit, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modelling. Written entirely in Standard C++ and OpenGL it runs on all Windows platforms, OSX, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris and FreeBSD operating systems.

Scilab project is a is a numerical computation system similiar to Matlab or Simulink.

Scilab is an open source numerical computation platform developed by a consortium managed by INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) which, to date, gathers 23 industrial companies, research centers and engineer schools. It provides a powerful environment for the development of scientific applications and for engineering. Each month, nearly 20,000 remote downloads of
Scilab are registered from the Internet site of the Consortium, which takes Scilab one of the most valued pieces of open source scientific oftware.

Mandriva, whose membership to the Scilab Consortium is pending, and he Scilab Consortium agreed to integrate Scilab into the new Mandriva Linux 2007 distribution (Discovery, Powerpack and Powerpack+). The development teams of Scilab and Mandriva cooperated in the integration f the latest version of Scilab (v4.0, announced in February 2006 and since downloaded more than 150,000 times) into this new Mandriva release. It is planned to continue this arrangement for future versions of Mandriva Linux and of Scilab. In addition, Scilab will also be integrated into Corporate Desktop 4, the Mandriva Linux workstation for businesses.

About The Scilab Consortium

The Scilab software is, since May 2003, produced by a consortium, managed by INRIA, which, to date, has 23* industrial companies, research centers and engineering schools as members. The creation of the Scilab Consortium reflects a will to produce an open source numerical computation platform of high quality. Scilab is developed by a dedicated and permanent team hosted by INRIA. Moreover, its open source nature allows external contributions and thus a level of know-how in the field of scientific computation can be reached which a single company could otherwise claim only with difficulty. Nearly 20,000 remote downloads of the Scilab software are carried out each month from the official site of the Consortium to the benefit of European and foreign companies, universities and research centers. The
membership of the Scilab Consortium is in constant growth.

Extcalc is a scientific graphic calculator for Linux. Extcalc is designed to use the full performance of a modern Computer for mathematical calculations. You can input difficult calculations on the Qt-based user interface and it is also possible to draw and analyse graphs with OpenGL.
Most scientific functions like roots, trigonometric functions, logarithms, integration add differential calculation can be used. It is also programmable. You can write and execute scripts with a C-like scripting language.
Enhancements:
- This release includes tools for statistical analysis and for the approximation of mathematical functions.
- All major features are now included.

Unicap provides a uniform API for all kinds of video capture devices. Unicap was designed keeping simplicity in mind so that developers can focus on their actual image processing tasks when using video capture devices.
Device drivers are accessed via a plugin mechanism. Support for new devices can be added on the fly, without recompilation of the library. The API remains the same for each device so that an application using unicap immediately works with all devices supported by unicap.
In the near future, transparent network support will be available allowing applications to use devices connected to a remote computer just as if they were local.
Device support
- IIDC 1394 Cameras: Support for industrial/scientific IEEE1394 cameras.
- DFG/1394
- video-4-linux: Support for many devices conforming to the ( old ) video-4-linux definition
- video-4-linux 2: Support for many devices conforming to the current video-4-linux II definition
Enhancements:
- This version adds some more color space conversion routines and some UI improvements.

Computation Job Management (jobman in short) is a program that calls executables according to a given program flow. Each executable is run in a separate process. It is useful when a project needs to carry out a series of calculations that are performed by software written in different languages or supplied by third parties, but invoking individual programs manually is error prone and hard to manage.
The various individual programs dont communicate with each other except via persistent storage. This is especially the case for some scientific computing, quantitative finance, and prototyped programming.
Enhancements:
- A job can output a status string indicating to skip other sibling jobs.
- Fixed a number of bugs.
- Mark the program in beta status as it has been used to manage jobs completed in days.