Arch Linux

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Linux and Electrical Engineering

Hi,

I'm a student of EE and I'd like to share some experiences about good softwares for Linux. Which are good programs, which are being actively developed, which are not, etc.

The reason I'm creating this topic and not searching is that it seems to be lots of apps in this area, so it'd be good to learn something from someone who has already tried some of them. Another reason is that in the very beginning of the course, so I don't know exactly what features should I search for.

TIA

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(lambda ())

ornitorrincos

Forum Fellow

From: Bilbao, spain

Registered: 2006-11-20

Posts: 198

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

just two points:

- http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=52840
- Wine

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-$: file /dev/zero
/dev/zero: symbolic link to '/dev/brain'

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

D'oh!

I searched for 'electrical engineering' before creating this topic, but I misread the title of that topic.

Sorry.

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(lambda ())

Cyrusm

Member

From: Bozeman, MT

Registered: 2007-11-15

Posts: 1,053

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

I'm currently a student in computer engineering (essentially Electrical engineering with a smattering of programming)  anyway,  I've found that Xcircuit, availible from the AUR, is an exceptional program for creating publishable circuit diagrams, it's only for design and does not provide any simulation or testing that I know of. also Octave and Gnuplot are extremely useful for waveform analysis and solving linear matrices (plus a huge amount of other features, it's like MATLAB for windows, only more powerful)  I also beleive there are a couple of HDL IDE's in the AUR, but I have not had any experience with them.

edit: oops, typed matlab when I meant octave

Last edited by Cyrusm (2009-04-04 03:01:20)

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Hofstadter's Law:
           It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Renan Birck

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-11-11

Posts: 401

Website

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

For simulation, use LTSpice under Wine. LT is freeware and, in my experience, much better than the commercial simulation apps (PSpice etc..) which I use at university.

You also might want to look at KTechLab, it is useful IMHO for digital electronics.

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x64 Arch + KDE|last.fm|twitter|blog|git|stack exchange|AUR

jack.mitchell

Member

From: Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK

Registered: 2008-08-28

Posts: 156

Website

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

For report writing texmaker and LaTeX are a godsend. Takes a day or two to fully get your head round it all but the web is full to the brim of information on using it.

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

And matlab is available for Linux, the student version is very affordable.

Cyrusm

Member

From: Bozeman, MT

Registered: 2007-11-15

Posts: 1,053

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

And matlab is available for Linux, the student version is very affordable.

I didn't know that MATLAB was availible for linux,
but octave is free

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Hofstadter's Law:
           It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

leeyee

Member

From: Kingston, Canada

Registered: 2009-01-07

Posts: 150

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

I'm an EE student too, but my primary research interests are in cellular networks. So for me useful software in Linux are: Matlab, NS2, and of course LaTeX.

I tried Octave and Scilab long time before and did not get used to them, so I switched to Matlab. Maybe after several years Octave has improved much?

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Archlinux x86_64 on Thinkpad T400
Intel X4500MHD / ATI HD3470 Graphics, 2G RAM, 160G HD

keenerd

Package Maintainer (PM)

Registered: 2007-02-22

Posts: 647

Website

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

Mathomatic (in the AUR) is good for chewing though messy algebraic problems.  Python+numpy covers linear algebra.  Gnuplot is invaluable when putting together reports.

For fun, write your own spice-ish emulator.  Nothing fancy, just enough for simple RC networks or a single bipolar transistor.  You'll learn more from it than a year of school.

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

I'm in the first semester yet, so I've doing only simple things. I've been using LaTeX and maxima for algebra. Geda seems to be a nice suite, but I haven't messed a lot with it.

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(lambda ())

Berticus

Member

Registered: 2008-06-11

Posts: 731

Re: Linux and Electrical Engineering

Did my last project with the Geda suite. Leeyee, I suggest checking out Sage. It seems as though they're gaining grounds faster than the other projects, and some people in the math community believe it will surpass Matlab and all the others.