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What are the advantages of using free software and how to get it

The election of the software that we are going to use can be a risky operation. I suggest that you consider the possibility of ``free software''.

Although there are some differences in the ``taxonomy'' of ``free software'', this term refers to software that can be legally copied and that is distributed with its sources. The freedom of using it spans to allow the modification of the code to fulfill your own requirements. Usually, ``free software'' is distributed free of charge.

Some programs widely recognized as excellent (Linux, emacs, latex, gimp...) belong to this category. From the point of view of the user, the utilization of this kind of software produces some subtle advantages that push forward his or her work, among them:

Free software is usually obtained by downloading from Internet sites or by installing from a Linux distribution. The election of the software that we will use is an important decision.

Probably, some characteristics of the program in question indicate that, most likely, it will be useful. Preferably a program should be:

In my opinion, Scilab is the right choice for the treatment of neurophysiological data: it is free, it contains source code (in Fortran, C and in its own language), it is powerful and very well documented, and it is reasonably easy to use.

In the next sections I will describe some characteristics of Scilab, trying to stress the possibilities of its use in a neurophysiological environment. These pages are directed to clinical neurophysiologists not necessarily formed in mathematics or programming.

Perhaps the best way of reading these pages is interactively with Scilab. You can check the examples in your own system and explore the wide possibilities of this package.


next up previous contents
Next: Some general features about Up: Introduction Previous: Why a clinical neurophysiologist   Contents
je 2006-10-13