This document, Scientific Computing with free software on GNU/Linux HOWTO, is copyrighted (c) 2002 by Manoj Warrier. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available here
No liability for the contents of this document is accepted. Use of the concepts, examples, links and information is entirely at your own risk. There may be errors and inaccuracies, that could damage your system, waste your time, etc... Proceed with caution, and although this is unlikely, the author takes no responsibility whatsoever.
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I have not used many of the software applications to which links are provided. There are simply too many applications that do the same thing, that one cannot be expected to have used all of them. In a book on Scientific Computing using GNU/Linux, one would mention ones favorite tool to carry out a task and describe it in detail. However this is a howto providing links to various available free tools for scientific computing and may contain links to some software that promises much but delivers little and vice versa.
This howto mainly consists of the links provided at http://Scilinux.sourceforge.net which has to be disbanded due to a name conflict. The best alternative seems to be to make it a Linux document and host it at the LDP site. Another reason is that there seems to be many free software applications doing the same things. We hope to provide links to the available software thereby making it easy for the scientific community to make a choice without spending much time.
In this document, I have the pleasure of acknowledging:
Linus Trovalds, Richard M. Stallman and their merry men for Linux, GNU and also for indirectly broadening various perspectives which were not really obvious.
A host of colleagues and friends from the Institute for Plasma Research, India for discussions at various times.
Marcel Bose, Ivan Lamouret, K. Scott Hunziker, Livine Christin, W. Herbert, Simon Pinches and many others for suggesting various links mentioned in this document.
Vasudha my wife for letting me do what I wish and egging me on with comments like "let us hope that you will finish at least this project"
Shishir and Ashoka are co-authors of this document because such a collection of links was Shishir's idea and Ashoka is always contributing by providing links, suggestions and a second point of view. They will be helping me maintain this HOWTO too.
Feedback is most certainly welcome for this document. Send your additions, comments and criticisms to the following email address : <m_war at users.sourceforge.net>.