installing R on debian linux

I have a shiny new debian linux box and am just about to install R.  I'm 
also a shiny new linux user,
so please excuse these naive questions.

I've read the 'R Installation and Admin guide (2002-10-01)' and also
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/ReadMe, and I know how to do

apt-get  install r-base

which gives me
 r-base-core r-base-html r-base-latex  r-base-core r-base-html r-base-latex

Yes as r-base is a "meta" package which pulls in everything which other
distro packs as the main R package. [1]

(but not r-base-dev).  But I also see a set of pre-compiled binaries for 

Yes, r-base-dev is needed only if you want to install/built other packages.
As it depends on other packages, it is not included above.

debian
woody on CRAN, r-doc, r-gnome, r-recommended, ...
and I also read in r-help of peoples' troubles in installing various
R packages, tckl stuff (you need to compile with readline, or pcre, or ...)

Those troubles typically come from people using distributions other than
Debian. E.g. Gnome and Tcl/tk are supported out of the box under Debian once
you install r-base (and get the main r-base-core package) as well as its
dependencies.

and I'm confused because the Installation and Admin
guide is generic and I don't know how the installation process actually
works.

Can someone help, or point me to some more specific documentation
for debian linux?

Not really. There are some books about Debian which may be useful. At least
one is even included in the distribution.

As this is not really R specific, feel free to also ask me in private, or
consider mailing the debian-user list.

Dirk
(Debian maintainer for R)


[1] Why so granular? Well, R is a large piece of software, and this gives
you degrees of freedom so you can later remove some of, say, the large
documentation packages and only retain you preferred format.

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