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I have DSP in my curriculum. I kindly request suggestions on alternatives to MATLAB. Ideally, alternatives that are not as "heavy", megabyte-wise.

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    $\begingroup$ See octave $\endgroup$ May 19, 2013 at 9:19
  • $\begingroup$ Why is "downloading size" a problem? I would expect cost to be much more important. $\endgroup$
    – endolith
    May 20, 2013 at 16:43
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    $\begingroup$ This question is cross-posted on Ask Ubuntu, and has good answers there. Stack Exchange generally disallows cross-posting questions, so I'm closing this one. $\endgroup$
    – Phonon
    May 20, 2013 at 18:06
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    $\begingroup$ @Phonon Yeah I did it for better answers. Different people and and they will give Different suggestions & that can help me to get the best. $\endgroup$
    – Raja G
    May 21, 2013 at 1:30
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    $\begingroup$ It's a legit question. I voted to re-open. $\endgroup$ Nov 22, 2023 at 0:42

3 Answers 3

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Octave is a good option. Some people call it as a free version of Matlab. I found Wolfram Mathematica to be of great use. It seems to be much more powerful than Matlab, not to mention, simpler to use.

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  • $\begingroup$ thank you I have installed Octave and Scilab. Which is good among these two ? $\endgroup$
    – Raja G
    May 19, 2013 at 13:56
  • $\begingroup$ They are both good. It depends on how well you know to use them. I prefer Octave. It is a personal preference. $\endgroup$ May 20, 2013 at 15:51
  • $\begingroup$ could you post a good startup link for octave ? Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – Raja G
    May 20, 2013 at 16:11
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I've been using NumPy/SciPy for everything. It doesn't have as many functions/features as Matlab, but the Python language is much nicer to work with, and it's free and open-source, so it's getting better all the time.

Python is very modular, so depending on which features you want, it may be a large download or a small download. I don't care about download or installation size, so I use the Python(x,y) package on Windows, which is based on the Spyder IDE, and includes lots of packages I may or may not use (117 MB). The bare minimum to try it out is Python and NumPy, which is about 20 MB + 3 MB.

pyzo is another collection of Python packages for scientific computing, for Win/Linux/Mac, at 79 MB, with IEP IDE. I've never tried IEP. "Spyder, PTK and IEP are IDE's that provide a Matlab-like interface. The development of each of these started before the release of any of the other."

See NumPy for Matlab users and my answer to Moving to Python (SciPy and NumPy) for Scientific Computing on Programmers.SE.

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  • $\begingroup$ I will try this for sure. Thank you for your valuable time and suggestions . :) $\endgroup$
    – Raja G
    May 20, 2013 at 16:52
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I have found Scilab and sage as somewhat better alternative to the MATLAB.

For Sage: http://www.sagemath.org/

For Scilab : https://www.scilab.org/

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  • $\begingroup$ You can also use cloud.sagemath.com online for free, where Sage, Scilab, and Octave are all available, at least from the terminal. There is no download at all, so this might be useful for you. $\endgroup$ Jun 4, 2014 at 22:37

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