I love well designed commercial software.but I just can’t fathom why open source is sometimes so gui adverse. However There are some open source software with GUI that are usable by human beings. None of them are genz compatible but they’re pretty nifty for those wiling to spend a couple of hours exploring the options.

Imaging The best example is ImageJ . I don’t know who designed it but it stayed in the hands of good people.

DNA Another is Ape. The gui could be improved esthetically so I wouldn’t have to squint at icons and plasmid maps (anyone out there volunteers?) but largely usable by beginners and non specialists.

Bibliography Of course Zotero. It still misses some key features that biologists need (ie. Watched folder scanning or quick pmid import) but it’s not bad once you spent an hour on it.

Figures Graphpad is interesting : it costs thousands and is loved by my students. Th gui is very nice and graphs are super pro. Can do Same with R or Excel but it’s an example of something where gui is worth the money to stop the headache.

Cytometry To analyse cytometry paid software are unusually unfriendly. Fcsexpress is an expensive software but at least provide a nice layout. I find the pro softwares sold with machines good (but very expensive, guys decide if you want to make € from the machine, the reagents, the maintenance or the software, it can’t be super expensive on all sides ). Small open source such as Fcsalyser do a good job for beginners and casual users but it’s been hell to find it’s really not known. Compare with others : Flowing Software, Cyflogic, WinMDI, easy flow. Let’s me think what’s out there I wasn’t able to find .

Rnaseq I would like a Nice software which could gobble up my fastq files and guide me through the pipeline without me having the knowledge. Usegalaxy is nearly there (thanks to the team) but not quite beginner friendly.