5. Numerical Methods and Libraries

The best thing that could happen for scientific computing with free software on GNU/Linux is the GNU Scientific Library GSL. It however has source code only in C and people who use FORTRAN will find that a let down. Pouncing on this opportunity it is recommended that GSL is another reason (in addition to the GCC C compiler, coupled with the advantages of C programming) for starting to learn to use C. In addition to this, the two best source code repositories for Numerical Methods and libraries are Netlib and GAMS. There are new numerical packages being developed outside the usual "write a FORTRAN program, get a numerical subroutine from INTERNET for solving the numerics" concepts. The merits and demerits of this approach are debatable, but there exist more options like Object Oriented Numerics GSL and GiNaC which are exciting developments.

5.1. Repositories

5.2. Other topic specific numerical libraries