Has anyone tried to compile R on the Nokia maemo platform? I've been thinking about buying the n900 phone when it comes out, but I guess the main selling point would be a possibility to run R on it. I've read some rumors that it is based on debian, and that it can run X11 apps. In theory, you wouldn't even need to write any GUI. You should be able to run R in command line mode, with plots appearing as X11 windows. http://cool900.blogspot.com/2009/10/comparing-freedom-on-maemo-and-android.html juha
R on maemo
2 messages · Juha Vierinen, Simon Urbanek
On Oct 27, 2009, at 12:13 , Juha Vierinen wrote:
Has anyone tried to compile R on the Nokia maemo platform? I've been thinking about buying the n900 phone when it comes out, but I guess the main selling point would be a possibility to run R on it. I've read some rumors that it is based on debian, and that it can run X11 apps. In theory, you wouldn't even need to write any GUI. You should be able to run R in command line mode, with plots appearing as X11 windows.
I didn't actually do it but given that the hardware is almost identical to the iPhone I'd say the chances are pretty good that it should work (simply cross-compile using ARM target bi-arch R for host and target as discussed for iPhone and Android). As you pointed out the UI situation is even easier although the devil may be in the details. Still, I don't think R is a useful application on a mobile device -- IMHO the future is in a thin mobile client accessing the cloud (which runs R among other things) since there is no point in trying to use the low-power CPUs for computing. Cheers, Simon