Uploaded October 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
You can use Matlab to quickly and easily solve systems of linear equations, but Matlab comes with a fairly heft price tag. There are many alternatives to Matlab and some of them are free and open source software (FOSS). In this video, I take a look at four FOSS alternatives to Matlab, and use them to solve a set of linear equations I came up with from a circuit analysis (mesh current analysis) I did (youtu.be/O_XweaUPDDM). The four alternatives I look at are:
Julia - julialang.org
Octave - gnu.org/software/octave
Scilab - scilab.org
NumPy - numpy.org
For solving systems of linear equations, all four of these are fairly easy to use. Julia, Octave, and Scilab can do it with the exact same console commands that you would use for Matlab. Numpy takes a bit more work to figure out, but if you are familar with Python and already have a Python installation, it is a very solid option.
01:05 - Using Julia
02:13 - Using Octave
03:17 - Using SciLab
03:53 - Using NumPy
06:10 - Summary
You can use Matlab to quickly and easily solve systems of linear equations, but Matlab comes with a fairly heft price tag. There are many alternatives to Matlab and some of them are free and open source software (FOSS). In this video, I take a look at four FOSS alternatives to Matlab, and use them to solve a set of linear equations I came up with from a circuit analysis (mesh current analysis) I did (youtu.be/O_XweaUPDDM). The four alternatives I look at are:
Julia - julialang.org
Octave - gnu.org/software/octave
Scilab - scilab.org
NumPy - numpy.org
For solving systems of linear equations, all four of these are fairly easy to use. Julia, Octave, and Scilab can do it with the exact same console commands that you would use for Matlab. Numpy takes a bit more work to figure out, but if you are familar with Python and already have a Python installation, it is a very solid option.
01:05 - Using Julia
02:13 - Using Octave
03:17 - Using SciLab
03:53 - Using NumPy
06:10 - Summary
