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Entries in current edition: 3513
WHAT'S ALL THIS, THEN?
This is an alphabetized and annotated list of links to various ``freely available'' software amenable to installation and use on computers running the Linux operating system. Some of the software is available in source form, some in binary form, and some in both. Currently (9/99) all of the software listed can be used on Linux Intel platforms, and many of them (except of course for those packages available only in binary form) can also be used on Linux Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC and other ports. I would also venture to guess that it is the rule rather than the exception that the packages are usable on most other UNIX platforms, with the exceptions becoming even fewer in number as the various UNIX flavors become more conformant with the POSIX standard.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ``FREELY AVAILABLE''?
All the software listed is freely available in one form or another. This does NOT mean that everything is available under a license that meets the official Open Source terms. What is does mean is that everything is freely available for use under some conditions but not necessarily all conditions. This means that the license types range from public domain (where anything and everything is fair game) to GPL to licenses that restrict usage to personal or academic situations. Occasionally a package will become commercial when I'm not looking. Feel free to harass me about such situations if I miss them. If you prefer your packages to be purely Open Source, then I recommend taking a gander at appwatch.
WHAT DO I NEED TO USE THESE PACKAGES?
You of course need some sort of installed Linux distribution, but I'm assuming you've already got one or, at the very least, can find out how to get and install one in a number of other places. To be wholly accurate, you really don't even need Linux but rather some sort of UNIX operating system since most of the packages will work under the major UNIX flavors. A more compelling necessity is a compiler to compile the programs. A solution to this need that is both highly recommended and highly portable is the GNU C/C++ compiler, i.e. GCC. This not only allows you to compile the packages written in C but also those written in Fortran via the g77 compiler since it is a front-end to GCC. Several commercial compilers are also available for these languages on the Linux platform, with the commercial Fortran compilers being much more advanced at present than g77. (For those of you becoming nauseous at my use of the ``F''-word, see the next selection for an explanation.) Some of the entries are written in languages other than the three mentioned above, and when they are I supply a link to another entry describing an appropriate compiler and/or interpreter for that language. In some cases commercial software may be required to use a package, a case in point being the freely available Matlab toolboxes I've listed. I've justified this (or perhaps not) by the fact that some other packages like Octave and Scilab can either run many Matlab scripts or have programs that will attempt to translate them into their language.
WHAT SORTS OF THINGS ARE LISTED HERE AND WHY?
The bulk of this list consists of computer programs. These range from single programs to huge packages of programs that can take up upwards of 100 Mb of disk space. There are conceptually broader entries such as TeX, Perl, and Tcl/Tk for things that have become much more than a single software package. To do justice to each of these packages (and others like them), an entry includes a description of the basic package as well as links to sources for the many ancillary packages, user groups, and Web sites associated with each. I've even created a separate section that lists all of these categories. There'll also be the occasional entry that links to another site that collects software of a specific algorithmic or conceptual theme, e.g. multigrid algorithms. I'm also starting to include entries of a more conceptual and historical nature - mostly to provide a fuller and hopefully more easily understood context for some of the more technically obscure packages. Lastly, there'll on rare occasion be entries that defy all categories whose existence depends solely on the vagaries of personal whim. It is, after all, my encyclopedia. This list was originally biased by my major interests - the the fields of numerical analysis and geophysical fluid dynamics - but has grown to encompass a much wider range of topics. This expansion of coverage led to my changing the name of the thing from ``Linux Software for Scientists'' to the present ``Linux Software Encyclopedia.'' But, true to its original nature, it still contains quite a few listings for Fortran programs seeing how it's still the language of choice for most scientific programming (although large inroads have been made by both C++ and C). Scientists should still find it interesting and useful as well as anyone with a Linux box and an interest in finding applications to run on it.
MIRRORING?
I don't at all mind if someone wants to mirror this site. If you decide you want to do this then please send me a note so I can mention it here. There are a few packages available which will automatically mirror a site. I use one (for other things) called, strangely enough, mirror.
LEGALESE
I like to keep the lawyers out of things as much as possible, but times being what they are I've got to request a few minor things from those who wish to copy this material. The ``Linux Software Encyclopedia'' is freely reproducible for educational and other nonprofit purposes, in which context copies (electronic or hard) can be made provided that the author is clearly credited, a link to the home site is maintained, and no changes are made to it without my permission. It may not be reproduced for any other purpose without my explicit permission. Having dispensed with the legal mumbo-jumbo, I have but one further request: enjoy.
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