This chapter guides through open access or open source software resources. The first section introduces virtual machines (VMs) and Debian Linux (and spin-offs).
Linux-based Operating Systems (OSs) greatly facilitate data-related scientific and engineering tasks because of very high stability and performance. Still, the existing infrastructures of many institutions does not enable using Linux and this is where virtual machines can help: They enable running another (guest) OS on the host OS through a virtualization framework.
The software presented in this section is not only made for Linux and can be mostly installed on many others OSs, too. Enjoy reading and running through the tutorials on geospatial software, git, numerical modelling software, and other helpful programs.