Octave

Application VersionCentOS 7: 3.8.2, CentOS 8: 5.2.0, Debian 9: 4.0.3, Debian 10: 4.4.1, Ubuntu 18.04: 4.2.2
LicenseGPLv3
Websitehttps://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

Description

Octave is an open source alternative to MATLAB.  It is typically less performant than MATLAB due to its lack of a just-in-time compiler, but it requires no licensing.  It has fewer toolboxes / less functionality available than MATLAB, but is overall much simpler to set up and is great for back-of-the-napkin linear algebra calculations.

Self-Service Version Installation/Updates

Specific versions of Octave can be installed by using Conda on your Cortex VM.  To do so, first search conda-forge to see what versions of Octave are available:

(base) -bash-4.2$ conda search -c conda-forge octave
Loading channels: done
# Name                       Version           Build  Channel
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_0  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_1  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_2  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_3  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_4  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_5  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_6  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1 blas_openblas_7  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     h5127272_11  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     h675bd89_15  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     h6b19570_14  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     h7337af8_13  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     hb4c947d_12  conda-forge
octave                         4.2.1     hf6200dd_15  conda-forge

When you have found the version that you want, create a new conda environment with that version using the following syntax:

(base) -bash-4.2$ conda create -n octave -c conda-forge octave=4.2.1

To use the version you want, you can activate your conda environment with the following syntax:

(base) -bash-4.2$ conda activate octave
(octave) -bash-4.2$ octave -v
octave: X11 DISPLAY environment variable not set
octave: disabling GUI features
GNU Octave, version 4.2.1
Copyright (C) 2017 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Octave was configured for "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu".

Additional information about Octave is available at http://www.octave.org.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/get-involved.html

Read http://www.octave.org/bugs.html to learn how to submit bug reports.

Version History

DateLinux DistributionVersion
2020/07/27CentOS 73.8.2
2020/07/27CentOS 85.2.0
2020/07/27Debian 94.0.3
2020/07/27Debian 104.4.1
2020/07/27Ubuntu 18.044.2.2

Further Reading