Hi everybody,
I wrote a note on my experience using open source softwares for scientific research. I tried to remember what were the things that made it difficult for me to transition from close source to open source. Here is the link:

http://people.bu.edu/acanidio/opensource.html

The softwares I use (and that I discuss) are LyX, Numpy and xfig. I hope this will help anybody that want to go through the same process.
Best