Does IBM SPSS Statistics run on Linux?

Verdict: No

No. IBM says the SPSS Statistics desktop software is not supported on Linux, and offers downloads for Windows and Mac only. Only the separate SPSS Statistics Server product runs on Linux.

IBM SPSS Statistics by IBM · Education · No way to run it

IBM is blunt about this in its own download notes for SPSS Statistics 31: the desktop software is not supported on Linux operating systems. The downloads on offer are Windows and Mac. There is a Linux build of SPSS Statistics Server, but that is a separate product for organisations that run analyses centrally, not the program you click on to open a data file.

If SPSS is required for a course or a job, plan around it rather than hoping. The usual routes are a university's remote desktop or virtual lab, which runs SPSS on someone else's Windows machine and shows it in your browser, or keeping a Windows machine or a Windows virtual machine for that one program. Check your licence before setting up a virtual machine, because some campus licences restrict this.

There is no free program on Linux that opens .sav files and behaves like SPSS. Some statistics packages can read SPSS data files, so your data is not trapped even if the program is, but the menus, output viewer and syntax you know do not come with it.

R with RStudio is what most departments point people to when SPSS is off the table. It does far more, it is free, and it is a real change of habit rather than a like-for-like swap.

What to use instead of IBM SPSS Statistics

RStudio

Different way of workingFree

The free workbench for R, with an official Linux version. Far more capable than SPSS, and everything is written as code rather than clicked.

Your files: R packages can read SPSS .sav data files. Syntax files and output documents do not carry across.

This doesn't have to stop you

One stubborn program doesn't have to decide the whole question. You can keep Windows on the same PC and restart into it only when you need IBM SPSS Statistics. Everything else you do can move.

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