Faculty Guide to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
The Faculty Guide lists some free and open source solutions to common software needs and includes software freely available on campus.
Listing of Free and Open-Source Software
Office Suites
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is the most popular free and open-source office suite. Use as a FOSS alternative to Microsoft Office (Write replaces Word, Calc replaces Excel, and Impress replaces PowerPoint)
Microsoft Office
Office 365 is freely available to the campus community. CTRL support: recurrent tutorials.
Databases
MySQL
MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. Requires a server to run. Use as a FOSS alternative to Microsoft Access.
SQLite
SQLite is a small, fast, very widely used relational database management system (RDBMS). It is serverless and self-contained. Use as a FOSS alternative to Microsoft Access.
Reference Databases And Citation
Mendeley
Mendeley is a reference manager system that has a free version of the program.
Zotero
Zotero provides reference management with word processor integration (including LibreOffice Write, Word, and Google Docs). Use as a FOSS alternative to EndNote
Graphics
TikZ
TikZ is a remarkably capable drawing language, suitable for technical drawing. Use as a FOSS alternative to point and click drawing applications.
Video And Audio File Editing
Shotcut
Shotcut is a highly capable editor for audio and 2d video. Use as a FOSS alternative to FinalCut.
Presentation
Beamer
LaTeX supports very high-quality presentations by means of the beamer document class. This is very powerful but has a challenging learning curve. Use as a FOSS alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint.
Impress
LibreOffice Impress is an open-source presentation application that competes directly with Microsoft PowerPoint. Use as a FOSS alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint.
Statistical Analysis
G*Power
G*Power is a point and click interface to calculate univariate power analyses.
GNU Octave
GNU Octave is a scientific programing language that is compatible with MatLab and can run various MatLab scripts.
Gretl
Gretl is a capable and fast econometrics package, with an emphasis on time-series analysis.
Julia
Julia is a multithreaded statistical programming language that can do parallel computing, machine learning, and more.
Just Another Statistical Program (JASP)
JASP is an SPSS-like statistical program that can do both Frequentist and Bayesian statistical analyses.
CTRL Support: Workshop On-Demand
Python
Python is a computer programming language that has statistical/machine learning functionality.
CTRL Support: Workshop On-Demand
R Programming Language
R is an extremely popular and capable software environment for statistical computing. Use as a FOSS alternative to Stata, SPSS, SAS.
CTRL support: recurrent tutorials.
Video Conferencing
Jitsi
Jitsi provides video conferencing. Use as a FOSS alternative to Blackboard Collaborate.
Scheduling and Organization
Resources pending
(open source content)
Mapping
QGIS
QGIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android and supports numerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities.
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