Monday, April 8, 2013

EPD Free - Enthought Python Distribution, with scientific and other packages

By Vasudev Ram

The Enthought Free Python Distribution (EPD Free), is a free Python distribution from Enthought, which includes additional Python packages / modules for scientific computing and graphing / plotting, such as SciPy, matplotlib and more.

I downloaded and installed it, and tried out some of the matplotlib examples in the Examples directory of the installation.

They worked fine.

Only tried it out a little so far, but I've known about Enthought for some time now, and it looks like a useful Python distribution for the stated purposes. They also have higher versions, presumably for pay, with support, etc.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises


7 comments:

Unknown said...

See also the Anaconda distribution from Continuum Analytics.

LaurentB said...

there's also Python(x,y).

Vasudev Ram said...

Thanks for all the comments.

I did know about Anaconda from reading and blogging about Continuum Analytics' products (specifically Wakari) recently, but hadn't mentioned it in this post.

Also knew of the existence of Python(x, y) from my post about WinPython some days ago, but haven't checked out either Anaconda or Python(x, y) yet.

Good to have multiple options ...

Anonymous said...

I've used EPD (academic) for a number of years, mainly because I was new to Python and everything worked out of the box on Windows. It allowed me to get up and running very quickly. I liked not having to worry about installing everything.

Recently, however, I find myself having trouble installing, and getting other packages to work right with EPD. EX: PIP installing stuff has been a pain; I could never get PyCUDA to work, etc. Perhaps if I used virtual environments, EPD wouldn't be a problem. Just this week I un-installed EPD in favor of the standard Python with PIP.

Anonymous said...

Did you try to get support from Enthought on your issues? Normally they are fairly responsive.

BrettRMurphy said...

FYI, we (Enthought) just released Enthought Canopy. It's the follow on to EPD. It includes the same Python distro but adds an analysis environment. The free version is called Canopy Express.

Vasudev Ram said...

I had come across Enthought Canopy just recently (after blogging about EPD Free), via Python Weekly, probably, and saved the link to check out a bit later, but didn't know that there was a free version. Thanks for the info!