QtOctave is an open source, cross-platform application for numerical computation. It is a graphical user interface (GUI) for the GNU Octave language, a high-level programming language designed for numerical computations. QtOctave allows users to run computations, create plots, and customize the graphical user interface. It provides a full suite of tools for creating and editing Octave scripts and working with data. It also supports integration with other popular software packages such as MATLAB and Python. QtOctave is freely available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and other operating systems.
qtoctave (RSVP) added gui building to octave. Matlab has a built-in GUI GUI builder. It is not an equivalent of qtoctave but of octave (with QTOctave as a complement).
Discontinued Derive was discontinued on June 29, 2007. The latest and last version is Derive 6.1 for MS-Windows.
It is an IDE. When they say the word GUI, they just mean that it is a full IDE with all the bells and whistles of an ide, such as code color and a console window or project files and folders. QtOctave, on the other hand, is a visual GUI builder that allows a developer to CREATE visual dashboards and control panels as an interface to their Octave applications.
GNU Octave
MATLAB
Xcos
SMath Studio
Derive
Anoc Octave Editor
DomainMathIDE
QTOctave is an add-on for octave. Therefore, it uses octave and, in fact, only works if octave is installed and running. So no - Octave is NOT an alternative to QTOctave although the two are related and reminiscent of each other.