FreeMat : How different is it from Octave? [closed]

Question

Have been looking for an alternative to MatLab...found working on Octave quite difficult...missing the debugging capabilities of MatLab...Came across FreeMat...wanted to know how is FreeMat different from Octave...is it just a graphical frontend to Octave like QtOctave (which I'm yet to explore) or is it more than that? What additional capabilities does it provide? What would be a better use of time - investing in FreeMat or makign do with Octave using tools like QtOctave (matlab not an option)?

Answer 1

In short, both GNU Octave and FreeMat are open-source alternatives to MATLAB. However, Octave is more mature and has wider community support.

I also found this interesting article that compares MATLAB, Octave, FreeMat and SciLab. It does point out a few issues against FreeMat:

1. It doesn't support some functions (such as kron and pcg).
2. It has limited 3-D graphics capabilities (e.g. no support for the mesh function).
3. It is also lacking in the ODE department, for not having a state-of-the-art solver.

Essentially, this article concludes that Octave is indeed the most compatible with MATLAB at present.

Now, if you're searching for a good GUI/IDE, try one of these.