There is Xcos, but IIRC it's pretty poor compared to Simulink. Honestly Simulink is super niche. I'd guess there are 10 times more MATLAB users than Simulink users. Not surprising there aren't many alternatives.
I think a bigger reason MATLAB is popular is that it works really reliably, it is very well documented, it has a ton of complex algorithms and functions built in (or available in toolkits at least) and the interactive GUI works very well.
There isn't anything anywhere that comes close to MATLAB's plotting abilities. And scientists do a hell of a lot of plotting.
I think a bigger reason MATLAB is popular is that it works really reliably, it is very well documented, it has a ton of complex algorithms and functions built in (or available in toolkits at least) and the interactive GUI works very well.
There isn't anything anywhere that comes close to MATLAB's plotting abilities. And scientists do a hell of a lot of plotting.