Author Topic: Scientific plotting software for linux  (Read 2588 times)

JaWiB

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Scientific plotting software for linux
« on: December 13, 2012, 03:01:02 AM »
Any of you guys know of some software I can use as a replacement for Origin? Anyone have experience with Octave/GNUPlot? It seems nice so far, but I can't figure out how to do some things. And what if I want to mess with the placement of objects (e.g., legends) or add an arrow to a specific part of a curve or something? Command line is nice for a lot of stuff, but sometimes I just want a GUI...

Looks like I'm stuck with origin for the time being, which is a major PITA since it's unbelievably slow and locks-up or crashes fairly often. Not to mention I only have a copy on my work desktop, so I can't easily work from home (and doesn't run in linux...)

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  • badfish
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Re: Scientific plotting software for linux
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2012, 10:07:59 AM »
I found GNUPlot to be overly complicated unless you can find an example of exactly what you want to do. Have you tried R? I just starting looking at using it for plotting a couple of days ago, seems promising.

JaWiB

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Re: Scientific plotting software for linux
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2012, 12:50:52 PM »
I tried R with ggplot2 and found it really confusing. All I wanted to do was plot one array on the x-axis vs another on the y-axis but it looked like the plot commands only accept y values. Also, I didn't see a way to get rid of the gray gridded background which looks ugly to me.