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Software Guide

Here are some softwares that we used in our lab. Choose whatever you like.

General Office Works

Microsoft 365

You should install Microsoft 365 by login to the portal using your NUS email and password. It includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneDrive, and Teams. Follow the instruction on NUS IT.

Zotero

For reference management, we use Zotero extensively and exclusively to enable collaboration and sharing of references. It has a plugin for Word.

LaTex

LaTex is used for writing papers and reports. For macOS, we use MacTex. Sometimes, we also use Overleaf for collaboration. If you write in LaTex locally, then you can use free softwares such as TexShop (come with MacTex), VS Code (need to be configured), TexStudio, and Lyx. Texifier is also good but you have to pay for it. There are other type setting system such as tectonic and you can find the installation guide here.

Install LaTex using HomeBrew

On macOS you can install MacTex using homebrew (see below for installation guide) 

brew install --cask mactex
If you don't want GUI, e.g. you want to use VS Code to write LaTex: 
brew install --cask mactex-no-gui

For reference, usually we export the references from Zotero library as a .bib file, then we edit it using JabRef and include it in LaTex document.

Tip

NUS has the subscription to Overleaf Premium. If you use VS Code, you can use Copilot for LaTex writing.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a powerful and free note taking app which uses Markdown language. Like VS Code, it also has lots of 3rd party extensions. For example, you can use copilot extension to utilize local large language model such as Ollama to help your writing.

Tip

Markdown cheat-sheet

Programming

Visual Studio Code

VS Code is a code editor developed by Microsoft with lots of plugins/extensions. Extensions such as VS Code-remote and python are essential for our code development. You can also use it to write markdown document and even LaTex.

Terminal Emulator

Python

You can use venv to create an virtual environment. You can find more information about venv here. Another way is to useconda, a package manager that makes it a lot easier to work with different python versions and packages. Download Miniconda from the webpage: https://docs.anaconda.com/free/miniconda/miniconda-other-installer-links/. After downloading the miniconda installer, install it using bash. Now, you should start a new terminal before proceeding.

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for MacOS and Linux (or WSL2). Please find more information here: homebrew. Packages such as wget and gfortran can be installed using homebrew.

Graphics and Design

Graph editing

VESTA

VESTA is a free and powerful visualization tool visualize crystal structure models. It supports MacOS, Windows and Linux.

Blender

Blender is an open-sourced and free software to render realistic/artistic figures. However, its learning curve is steep. It also needs a very good hardware to run.

Awesome Mac

Please have a look at the Awesome Mac project where they have a collection of good software for macOS