I have used Matlab, Scilab and Octave extensively. Octave is almost identical to the core Matlab, however, there are a few small differences. One of the main differences is the "plot" command and related commands to save figures etc. Matlab has its own plotting functions but Octave uses Gnuplot. I find Gnuplot a little awkward to use.
The Syntax of Scilab is a little different to Matlab and Octave but it doesn't take long to learn. Also, I have found Scilab to be a bit more polished than Octave and I like the syntax now that I have gotten used to it.
In summary, all 3 programs are very good but overall Scilab is my favorite.
BTW, the version of Scilab in the repos seems to use Tamil fonts by default so I compiled the latest version from source. If you choose to compile from source you will need to install a few *-dev packages from Synaptic (./configure will complain each time it can't find something).
Paul
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