Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010, 3:04 pm
MATLAB vs QtOctave First Impressions: QtOctave Looks Better
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N A KDE (Qt) desktop like mine, despite MATLAB putting a lot of effort into improving the GUI on the GNU/Linux side* (even adding a Microsoft Windows-esque “Start” button at the bottom left), QtOctave integrates more nicely with the desktop. Thanks to all those who suggested some other tools including R, Sage, Scilab, QtOctave, graphviz and so on as I make my way into the world of Free software-only research (valuable pointers in the comments too).
All the code I’ve ever produced is Free software, but whenever I worked with MATLAB only the underlying framework was proprietary. This created a sort of trap, wherein my free/libre code depended on code which was not. In the near future I hope to produce code, blog items, upload of all code I write (including code sample for explanatory purposes), screecasts, etc. I may even commit code upstream if it’s polished enough for general-purpose use. I will continue to share dents and images on a regular basis too. In the mean time, for comparative purposes, I will also use my academic licence of MATLAB. I was once ranked first in the world for my code contributions to MATLAB, but although my code was all free software it helped MATLAB (BSA sponsor and thus a contributor to an attack on the software industry) just sell more copies of proprietary software. I am not a disgruntled prominent user of MALTAB but someone who is trying to show the way out of MATLAB mostly for idealogical reasons. If everything works as I hope, I will soon be 100% free of proprietary software.
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* It was far, far uglier a few years back.
