For most people, the calculators on our smartphones are quite enough. However, for university students, researchers, and scientists, having an advanced calculator capable of dealing with complex mathematical operations is a must.
Qalculate! (GTK) is an incredible, little multi-purpose calculator that can handle pretty much everything thrown at it including complex math equations and functions, as well as currency conversions, and percent calculations.
It’s also free, open-source, and cross-platform (it works on all major OSes out there such as Windows, macOS, and most Linux distributions.
Just how capable is Qalculate! exactly?
The short answer is – surprisingly capable. It looks like pretty much any complex calculator out there, and it’s actually quite user-friendly.
However, what makes Qalculate! so special is its insanely massive library which includes a plethora of customizable functions, unit calculations, conversions, physical constants, symbolic calculations (including integrals and equations), and arbitrary precision.
The list goes on with the ability to calculate uncertainty propagation, interval arithmetic, and plotting scenarios. You can find a complete list of all the supported functions, units, variables, and some nice examples on the app’s official website.
What else?
Besides having an outstanding library, Qalculate! also excels when it comes to user experience. The GUI is built using GTK (or Qt) so it looks very nice, it has calculation history, practical menus for fast access to all the advanced features, customizable meta modes, dialog management options, and configurable keyboard shortcuts.
In addition, you can also edit/create functions, variables and units, effortlessly edit matrices and vectors, and perform fast conversions between number bases, floating point conversion, calendar conversions, and percentage calculations (and it even has a period table).
Conclusion
We don’t usually like to use the word “ultimate,” because, well, even if an app is good or the best today, tomorrow it might be overthrown by a newer product.
However, in the case of Qalculate!, the usage of this expression seems befitting. It certainly is one of the best, if not the best-advanced math desktop calculator app out there.
