It can be difficult to afford costly educational software as a student. And that’s where Linux excels—its open-source concept is of great help to students, offering many helpful yet free-of-cost educational apps to aid in their learning.

So, let’s look at some of the most useful educational apps for students available on Linux for free.

1. Polar

Polar is a web content manager and organizer for Linux. You can easily work on your PDF files or read ebooks using Polar. The annotation feature allows you to conveniently highlight a word or sentence in your file.

You can also download web pages and save them as HTML files. Polar's page marks feature is of great help in keeping track of your reading history. The app doesn’t need an internet connection as all content is downloaded for offline use.

Download: Polar (Free)

2. Anki

Anki provides students with a non-traditional way to learn things. Its flashcards feature lets you learn things better. The flashcards are based on your learning material. You can even customize them by adding images, text, and videos.

Anki is helpful if you are preparing for an exam. It can decrease the time you spend studying. The app is free of cost and easily available across various Linux distros.

Download: Anki (Free)

3. KBruch

KBruch helps in practicing fractional and percentage math problems. There are various modes for practice, such as arithmetic, comparison, conversion, mixed number, and percentages.

KBruch gives feedback on the operation performed. The in-app metrics such as correct, incorrect, and skip help you track and improve your learning curve. It is a minimal app and easy to use even for novice users.

Download: KBruch (Free)

4. kig

kig is another mathematical app for students running Linux. It provides effective tools to learn geometry. The app allows you to create mathematical figures using the provided drawing tools. It has a complete drawing set that helps you in using different design tools and objects effectively.

kig also assists in understanding the geometry theorems. Visual learning allows you to better understand and grasp geometrical concepts.

Download: kig (Free)

5. kalzium

kalzium is an educational app for chemistry students. It displays the periodic table of the elements. You can find detailed information on each element, such as its ionization energy, melting point, electron affinity, electronegativity, and more.

kalzium lets you visualize the molecular structure to get a better understanding of the elements. You can also calculate the mass for a specific element using chemical equations. Moreover, the periodic table is customizable with different color and gradient schemes.

Download: kalzium (Free)

6. kgeography

kgeography is a useful educational app for Linux to understand the geography and political divisions in the world. It gives you detailed information about continents and countries across the globe. You can browse the map and click on an area to see its name and other information.

kgeography also offers fun games in which you've to guess a country, division, capital, or flag. It helps in the learning process and makes it easy for users to familiarize themselves with the globe.

Download: kgeography (Free)

7. Scilab

Scilab is a powerful and advanced tool for engineering students. It offers a ton of mathematical calculation, analysis, and design tools. The app provides signal processing, image enhancement, statistical analysis, control system design, and much more.

Scilab is mostly used by professionals and engineering students. It requires some technical knowledge, however. On Linux, Scilab is free to use for everyone.

Download: Scilab (Free)

8. KAlgebra

KAlgebra is a mathematical calculator for graphs on Linux. You can calculate complex numerical functions and plot them on a graph using the app. It also lets you calculate numerical, logical, or analytical functions.

KAlgebra supports both 2D and 3D graphs. The dictionary feature helps understand the representations of built-in functions and sample plots. It also contains examples to help understand the concepts better.

Download: KAlgebra (Free)

9. Mendeley

Mendeley is a Linux educational app specially designed for research students. As a student, you are most likely to come across research work in your educational career. Mendeley makes this process easy and efficient for you.

The app allows you to manage and share your resource papers. You can also import a variety of documents from different sources.

In addition, Mendeley has a social network that allows researchers to collaborate and assist each other. You can choose to be either private or public in the community.

Download: Mendeley (Free)

10. LibreOffice

Not everyone can afford Microsoft Office, and as a student, you almost always need an office suite to perform different tasks. That’s where LibreOffice comes in handy as it is a popular cross-platform office suite available for Linux for free.

This office suite provides you with all the document viewers and editors for text documents, presentation files, and spreadsheets. LibreOffice also allows you to add extensions to enhance your experience.

Download: LibreOffice (Free)

11. GNU PSPP

GNU PSPP is an open-source statistical analysis tool for Linux. Most mathematical tools in the market are complex hence paid. PSPP is an app for students that provides all its features for free, keeping you away from limited trials woes.

The app allows you to perform statistical analysis using the various tools it provides. GNU PSPP also offers features such as linear regression, data reordering, logistic regression, factor analysis, and many more.

Download: GNU PSPP (Free)

12. Duolingo

Duolingo is a really popular language learning app for smartphones. You'll be glad to know that it is available for Linux as well. The app offers various features specially designed for students.

You can create a classroom to learn through collaboration. You can also invite others to join the room. The app helps you with grammatical concepts as well.

Duolingo is a well-organized app. It contains courses from basic to advanced levels to help students across various ages and stages. It is free for everyone and available on different Linux platforms.

Download: Duolingo (Free)

13. DrMIPS

DrMIPS is a technical tool mostly used by engineers and students. It helps students understand computer architecture.

The app presents a graphical simulation of MIPS (million instructions per second) processors to understand the architecture. The primary aim of this application is to make architecture easy for students and teachers.

Download: DrMIPS (Free)

14. eXeLearning

eXeLearning is an educational tool to create and manage academic content on Linux devices. It uses XHTML to create web-based content and supports various web formats such as HTML5, XML, and many more.

The app makes it easier for teachers and students to post their content and organize it on web pages. eXeLearning comes with a wide range of built-in styles.

eXeLearning is free for everyone. It is a cross-platform app and is available across PC and mobile devices.

Download: eXeLearning (Free)

15. KTurtle

KTurtle is a computer programming application for Linux. It aims at easing the learning process for programming students.

The app helps you understand programming concepts easily through visual experience. It also makes the programming syntax easy so that novice learners can understand it conveniently.

KTurtle is an open-source educational app. It is free to use for everyone and is available across various Linux distros.

Download: KTurtle (Free)

Keep Learning New Things With Linux

For the last decade or so, as technology has evolved, learning processes have also reached new heights. Digital apps are now a necessary part of the educational system.

There are more apps available on even more subjects for Linux. Feel free to search for the app of your desire on your distro’s repositories, Snap Store, or Flathub.