GNU Octave

GNU Octave is an open source programming language for numerical analysis (especially numerical linear algebra).^[7][8][9] This language is mostly compatible with MATLAB.^[10]

GNU Octave

GNU Octave 4.3.0+ running on Linux
Developer(s)	John W. Eaton and many others[1]
Initial release	4 January 1993; 32 years ago (4 January 1993) (first alpha release) 17 February, 1994; 31 years ago (17 February, 1994) (version 1.0)[2]
Stable release	10.2.0[3] / 29 May 2025; 58 days ago (29 May 2025)
Preview release	6.3.90a / 20 October 2021; 3 years ago (2021-10-20)[4]
Repository	hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave
Written in	C++ (main), Octave itself (scripts), C (wrapper code), Fortran (linear algebra wrapper code)[5]
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD
Available in	18 languages[6]
Type	Scientific computing
License	2007: GPL-3.0-or-later[a] 1992: GPL-2.0-or-later[b]
Website	gnu.org/software/octave/

Usage

GNU Octave was originally made for numerical analysis. But today, it is also used for the following purposes (the purposes may increase in the future):

• Interval arithmetic^[11][12]
• Life science^[13]
• Numerical methods for ordinary differential equations^[14]
• Numerical methods for partial differential equations^{[15][16][17][18]}
• Scientific education^[19]
• Technical simulation^[20]

Development history

Time	Action
1988/1989	1st discussions (Book and Software)
February 1992	Begin of Development
January 1993	News in Web (Version 0.60)
February 1994	1st Publication (Version 1.0.0 to 1.1.1)[21]
December 1996	2nd Publication (Version 2.0.x) with Windows Port (Cygwin)[22]
March 1998	Version 2.1
November 2004	Version 2.9 (DEV Version of 3.0)[23]
December 2007	Publication of Version 3.0 (Milestone)[24]
June 2009	Publication of Version 3.2 (Milestone)[25]
8 February 2011	Version 3.4.0 (Milestone)[26]
22 February 2012	Publication of Octave 3.6.1 (Milestone)[27][28]
31 December 2013	Publication of Octave 3.8.0 (experimental GUI)[29][30][31]
29 May 2015	Version 4.0.0 (stable GUI and new Syntax for OOP)[32][33][34][35]
14 November 2016	Version 4.2.0 (gnuplot 4.4+)[36][37][38][39]
30 April 2018	Version 4.4.0 (new Goal for GUI QT Toolkit, FLTK deprecating in future)[40][41][42]
1 March 2019	Publication of Octave 5.1.0 (QT5 preferred)[43]