Obstacle to replacing Windows: Statistics & Graphing

I'm in a biomedical research lab, and have recently switched over to Linux for lab work. For the most part, my greatest problem has been compatibility: no one knows what to do with an .sxw file. It's been a really positive experience; most of the software that I now use I find to be in many ways superior to what I had used before in Windows. However, there is a shrinking list of programs I have not yet found a replacement for.

In Windows, I used to use GraphPad Prism to plot my data on graphs. You can input your data in a spreadshet and it will automatically generate any type of graph, with any type of significance and median determination method you want, in any combination you want. It can then export each graph into a tiff ( A GREAT feature).

It's a great program, but it won't run under WINE (I tried...it crashes). I've searched this forum, and there's a really low signal to noise in my search results from Freshmeat and Sourceforge; all my searches show up "Net statistics" and "graphical" something or other. Does anyone know of a good scientific statistical graphing suite for Linux?

Try digging through the www.google.com/linux results for "scientific statistical graphing suite"

I think I saw a couple promising hits there...let us know what/if you find

Follow my sig on equivalents. Also, you can save the OpenOffice docs as MS 200/XP format. File-->Save As then select.

hlrguy

Might be a bit harder to use (OK, it'll probably be a lot harder to use), but you could take a look at GNUPlot.

I also saw a project on Freshmeat named Guppi (it needs the Gnome libs installed), which may be a bit more friendly if it does what you want. Or possibly KMatPlot (it's a KDE program).

Biological software
SAL
Mathematical software
SAL again
Oh one more SAL
SAL the 3rd
I would take a look at GRACE
Grace

Table of equivalent Linux/Windows programs
Table of equivalents
Does this mean I get a piece of the patent money? :)

Hi jvolm,
I've looked into this particular thing in the past but haven't had a need to run stats programs lately.

I do know that the most commonly used ones are:
R (I believe it's more of a stats language than a gui based program)
PSPP (Supposed to be like SPSS)
SalStat

I have been unable to find a good graphing program but Guppi looked interesting. I have a link here:
Guppi

I hope this helps. Also, please provide us with an update of what you find; I'm very interested. In fact if you would PM just to make sure I see it, I'd really appreciate it. Good luck.

Wow, looks like I have a lot of alternatives. It's going to take me a while to look these over and decide which one I like the best.

Thanks for all of the input, guys!

And as for the patent money, heck even if there is a patent 20 years from now, I don't even get a cut of it. It all winds up going to the school and department. I might get a few bucks out of it if it's really lucrative. Most of it winds up going straight back into the costs of research.

Just to add to mengle's suggestion on R . I have been using it for the last two years and it is a complete statistics package. It does not have a gui interface, but it is capable of reading data from spreadsheets and its graphing capapbilities are awesome.