Octave

Octave is a high-level programming environment that is very similar to Matlab. The biggest difference? Octave is free, Matlab is not.

Obtaining and installing Octave

There are two ways to obtain Octave for Windows, the "easier" (but possibly less reliable) way, and the "harder" (more time and bandwidth consuming but probably better in the long run) way.

Before you start, if you haven't already got a postscript viewer (ie a program that reads .ps files) then follow these instructions to download one. Octave needs it to carry out certain operations.

The easier way

Self-installing windows setup files are available at the GNU Octave repository. From here, click on the link "octave-forge-windows". At this page, download the file (probably listed at the top) "octave-2.1-xx-windows" (where xx is the highest number of those available). Once downloaded, run the file.

You may encouter a message that says something like "If you are not running an intel x86 system this might not work." When we did it, we weren't running an intel x86 system and it all still seemed to work. The installation will also ask you to nominate your text editor and postscript viewer. If that didn't work, well, you might like to try the "harder" way, below.

The harder way

Ok, actually it's not hard, but it does involve a bigger download. The idea is that you download a Unix-like environment for Windows called Cygwin. The instructions given below only install the basics of Cygwin along with just enough to be able to run octave. If you know what you're doing and want to install windows versions of other Unix programs (for example ssh, vim, etc) then you will probably be able to figure out how to do that as you go along.

To download Cygwin, go to Cygwin's home page . Download the file setup.exe, and run it.

When prompted to "choose a download source" select "install from internet". For the next two screens, the default options are fine. At the "select your internet connection" screen, choose "direct connection". At the "download site" page, the default is fine.

It is at the "select packages" screen where some work needs to be done. When you first reach it, things are set up so that the minimum Cygwin installation is made. We need only to make a couple of changes.

• Click the + sign next to "Math"
• Click the arrows next to "octave", "octave-forge", and "octave-headers"

Once you have done this, you are basically done. The installation could take a while though.

Some final comments about Cygwin: if you wish to install other packages at a later date, or uninstall packages, or update packages, simply run setup.exe again and make different selections at the "select packages" screen.

Running Octave

• Open Cygwin.
• At the command prompt type startx. This opens Cygwin/X, which has graphical capabilities. (Note that this step is not required if you do not intend to do anything requiring graphics with Octave.)
• At the command prompt type octave.

Documentation for Octave

Octave has a very good online help system. Just type help at the Octave prompt and a wealth of reference information will be at your fingertips.

For more comprehensive and friendly assistance, download the Octave manual (1.1 MB download).