Many of our courses make use of our Geomatics teaching labs, both for scheduled classes and for student access outside of class time. In several cases we are able to offer software to run on your own computers, but those computers need to meet the software’s requirements. We have compiled a list of the most commonly used software packages and links to their requirements below.
If you would like to be able to run ArcGIS Pro, you will need a Windows computer. Some Apple computers can run Windows as well as macOS, but note that recent macOS computers no longer use Intel (x86) CPUs, which are required for ArcGIS. While emulation is available on those computers, the performance is generally not considered suitable for GIS work.
All the other software we use is generally available on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Chromebooks and Android or iOS tablets are generally not able to run the software used in GIS courses.
Table 1 – Software used in multiple DGES courses
| Software | Hardware Requirements |
| Google Earth Pro (free) | Available for Windows, macOS and Linux – see Google’s page on system requirements and installation instructions. |
| ESRI ArcGIS Pro 3.3 – available from the library | Please see https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/get-started/arcgis-pro-system-requirements.htm |
| QGIS 3.32 | If you can run the above 2 programs, you can run this too. Installers available here. |
| R (free: download latest version) | No known minimum requirements. |
| RStudio Desktop (free: download latest version) | |
| Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Office is available at no extra charge. A web version of the office suite is also available; login with your cmail address. |
| Text editor | Included with operating systems (e.g. Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on macOS), or freely available alternatives (e.g. Notepad++ or BBEdit). |
| Python 3.x (free, and may be already installed, depending on your configuration) | If you can run the above software, you can run this too. |
Table 2 – Other software which may be used in specific courses (usually 3rd/4th year)
| GIMP (free) or Adobe Photoshop ($) | Modern multi-core CPU, 16GB RAM, dedicated GPU |
| Inkscape (free) or Adobe Illustrator ($) | |
| Blender (free) | |
| ESA SNAP (for Remote Sensing courses) | SNAP will work on 32 and 64 bit Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. At least 4GB RAM recommended |