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installing R on Ubuntu

32 messages · cruz, Joseph Magagnoli, Brian Ripley +16 more

Messages 1–25 of 32

#
I've read some of R's literature on Linux, including the R Admin manual, and
didn't find it very useful, which is probably my own limitation.  But I did
finally manage to get it working well.  I'm posting this to help others. 
The following worked when installing R 2.8.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. 
Here are truly step-by-step instructions for those who don't know Linux
(like me):

Installation and Initial Set-Up of R for Ubuntu Linux

1. Open the Bash terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
2. Type these lines to add the security key to access the latest version of
the R Ubuntu package:
	user at computer:~$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key E2A11821
	user at computer:~$ gpg -a --export E2A11821 | sudo apt-key add -
3. Use the Bash terminal to open your sources.list file with gedit (text
editor) for editing:
	user at computer:~$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
4. Add this line to the bottom of the sources.list file:
	deb http://rh-mirror.linux.iastate.edu/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu hardy/
5. Save the file and go back to the Bash terminal.
6. Type this to update apt-get's database before you install R:
	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get update
7. Install R with this command:
	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get install r-base
8. Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, and download
the build-essential package.
9. To use R, simply enter R in the Bash terminal.  To quit, enter q().


Additional programs will be needed to install other packages or work with
other programs:
1. Install compilers for C++ and Fortran
	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get install g++ gfortran
2. Install the developer versions of Blas and Lapack (what are these?)
	user at computer:~$ apt-get install libblas-dev liblapack-dev


Updating Packages in R
1. Open the Bash terminal and start R with root permissions
	user at computer:~$ sudo R
2. Type > update.packages()


Installing the R Commander GUI
1. Open the Bash terminal and type:
       user at computer:~$ apt-get install r-cran-rcmdr 


Using the R Commander GUI
library(Rcmdr)
...or once the library is open and Commander has been shut down, type:
commander()


Notes
It looks like most of R has been put here:
/etc/R (Rprofile.site is here)
/usr/lib/R


Downloaded Packages seem to go here:
/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/
#
nice:)

The next step is to install Emacs, because we need a editor as we
code, we need to run the line as we go, so here is a very good guide
for the complete starter:

http://www.stat.rice.edu/~helpdesk/tutorial/ess.html

The official ESS manual does not bother to go into this brief, I can't
even start a R session in Emacs when I have read the ESS manual
several times, but it is getting clearer to me now as I have been
writing R codes by Emacs for a couple of weeks...

It is exactly the same as we code in Windows.

Thanks,
cruz

PS: The R gurus may find this thread annoying cause it is too trivial to them.


On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Paul Heinrich Dietrich
<paul.heinrich.dietrich at gmail.com> wrote:
#
I would really like to see a good introduction to Emacs, and will check out
that link.  I know that Emacs and ESS are supposed to be the best, and are
the most customizable.  The reason I put the R Commander GUI instead of
Emacs/ESS is because in my first attempt to get R on Ubuntu Linux, I did
successfully get Emacs/ESS working (sadly, I don't remember how exactly),
but found it too frustrating.  Again, I'm sure it's the best in the end, but
here's what was driving me nuts:

Copy/Paste is not Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v...I figured it out, but don't remember
what it is.
Entering a _ automatically creates a <-, and you must enter __ to get _.
There is no "stop" button (hopefully there is one in R Commander, haven't
explored yet).
It kept trying to establish a working directory, and was inconsistent in
when it would accept what directory.

I was also looking at the JGS GUI.  Online screenshots look incredible, but
I didn't go with it because it depends on Java, which is not open-source,
and I'm really liking that philosophy, but to each his own.

Thanks for the link, I'm anxious to try to figure out Emacs/ESS. I'll go
look at it now.  Cheers.
#
Amendment/Question #1:

When I update.packages(), it tells me that rgl fails to update because it
can't find X11.  Again, I'm pretty new to Ubuntu, but it looks like X comes
with Ubuntu.  I see files under /etc/X11.  Does this mean I need to download
x11-common (or x11-apps, or x11-utils, or one of the others?) with the
Synaptic Package Manager?  I hesitate on this because it seems like X11 is
not a simple add-on package, but something core to Ubuntu.  Any help is
appreciated.  Thanks.
#
Dear me.  Is the installation of R under Ubuntu really that complex?  I 
have a dual boot machine (Linux / Windows, where I use the latter the 
most) and have plans to try R under Linux, but have not done so yet.  Is 
it possible to simplify the Linux install procedure to make R more 
accessible to novices?

Compare that to Windows.  (1) Download installation program (2) Run 
installation program.  That is it.

Tom
Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:

  
    
#
On Sun, 8 Feb 2009, Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:

            
That's optional -- you can set CUA if you like that (an item on the 
Options menu, at least in the Emacs version I looked at).  But on an 
X11 interface, selecting copies and right-click pastes. (Beware, your 
Windows Manager may also have a separate clipboard.)
That's optional (and I realy think should be off by default now _ as 
an addignment operator is ancient history).  Add

(ess-toggle-underscore nil)

to your .emacs.
You'll soon find that buttons are slow compared to keystrokes.
'It' being ESS, I guess,  There is an ess-help list on which to 
discuss what you mean there.
I presume you mwan JGR.  Lots of Java is Open Source, and I beieve JGR 
may run under OpenJDK.

  
    
#
On 8 February 2009 at 20:36, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
| Dear me.  Is the installation of R under Ubuntu really that complex?  I 
| have a dual boot machine (Linux / Windows, where I use the latter the 
| most) and have plans to try R under Linux, but have not done so yet.  Is 
| it possible to simplify the Linux install procedure to make R more 
| accessible to novices?

Yes. 'sudo apt-get install r-base ess ggobi' and you have working R, ESS and
Ggobi.  Start Emacs, type 'M-x R' and you have an R session inside Emacs.

Is that really easier to accomplish in Windows?

Dirk

| 
| Compare that to Windows.  (1) Download installation program (2) Run 
| installation program.  That is it.
| 
| Tom
|
| Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:
| > I've read some of R's literature on Linux, including the R Admin manual, and
| > didn't find it very useful, which is probably my own limitation.  But I did
| > finally manage to get it working well.  I'm posting this to help others. 
| > The following worked when installing R 2.8.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. 
| > Here are truly step-by-step instructions for those who don't know Linux
| > (like me):
| > 
| > Installation and Initial Set-Up of R for Ubuntu Linux
| > 
| > 1. Open the Bash terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
| > 2. Type these lines to add the security key to access the latest version of
| > the R Ubuntu package:
| > 	user at computer:~$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key E2A11821
| > 	user at computer:~$ gpg -a --export E2A11821 | sudo apt-key add -
| > 3. Use the Bash terminal to open your sources.list file with gedit (text
| > editor) for editing:
| > 	user at computer:~$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
| > 4. Add this line to the bottom of the sources.list file:
| > 	deb http://rh-mirror.linux.iastate.edu/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu hardy/
| > 5. Save the file and go back to the Bash terminal.
| > 6. Type this to update apt-get's database before you install R:
| > 	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get update
| > 7. Install R with this command:
| > 	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get install r-base
| > 8. Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, and download
| > the build-essential package.
| > 9. To use R, simply enter R in the Bash terminal.  To quit, enter q().
| > 
| > 
| > Additional programs will be needed to install other packages or work with
| > other programs:
| > 1. Install compilers for C++ and Fortran
| > 	user at computer:~$ sudo apt-get install g++ gfortran
| > 2. Install the developer versions of Blas and Lapack (what are these?)
| > 	user at computer:~$ apt-get install libblas-dev liblapack-dev
| > 
| > 
| > Updating Packages in R
| > 1. Open the Bash terminal and start R with root permissions
| > 	user at computer:~$ sudo R
| > 2. Type > update.packages()
| > 
| > 
| > Installing the R Commander GUI
| > 1. Open the Bash terminal and type:
| >        user at computer:~$ apt-get install r-cran-rcmdr 
| > 
| > 
| > Using the R Commander GUI
| > library(Rcmdr)
| > ...or once the library is open and Commander has been shut down, type:
| > commander()
| > 
| > 
| > Notes
| > It looks like most of R has been put here:
| > /etc/R (Rprofile.site is here)
| > /usr/lib/R
| > 
| > 
| > Downloaded Packages seem to go here:
| > /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/
| 
| 
| -- 
| +----------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Tom Backer Johnsen, Psychometrics Unit,  Faculty of Psychology |
| | University of Bergen, Christies gt. 12, N-5015 Bergen,  NORWAY |
| | Tel : +47-5558-9185                        Fax : +47-5558-9879 |
| | Email : backer at psych.uib.no    URL : http://www.galton.uib.no/ |
| +----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 
| ______________________________________________
| R-help at r-project.org mailing list
| https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
| PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
| and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
#
On 8 February 2009 at 06:56, Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:
| 
| Amendment/Question #1:
| 
| When I update.packages(), it tells me that rgl fails to update because it
| can't find X11.  Again, I'm pretty new to Ubuntu, but it looks like X comes
| with Ubuntu.  I see files under /etc/X11.  Does this mean I need to download
| x11-common (or x11-apps, or x11-utils, or one of the others?) with the
| Synaptic Package Manager?  I hesitate on this because it seems like X11 is
| not a simple add-on package, but something core to Ubuntu.  Any help is
| appreciated.  Thanks.

What is wrong with

     $ sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl

By the way, you may want to subscribe to the r-sig-finance list and continue
the discussion there.

Dirk
#
Dear Paul,

I haven't read everything in this thread, but have a couple of comments
relative to using the R Commander:
On
out
but
The R Commander isn't meant to be a serious programming editor, but rather a
basic-statistics GUI. I think that you'll find it disappointing as an
editor.
There is no "stop" button in the Rcmdr; having one isn't be a bad idea, but
I'm not sure how I could implement it in a platform-independent manner (or
even, frankly, in a platform-dependent manner). Perhaps someone has a
suggestion for doing that.

Regards,
 John
but
http://www.nabble.com/installing-R-on-Ubuntu-
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
#
Hi Dirk,
Sorry, I'm not trying to drag out the installation process here, but just
trying to get it to work right in Linux.
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
I tried this suggestion, and here was the terminal output:

r-cran-rgl is already the newest version.
r-cran-rgl set to manually installed.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

So, just to double-check, I went into R as sudo, entered update.packages(),
and got this:

rgl :
 Version 0.76 installed in /usr/lib/R/site-library 
 Version 0.82 available at http://streaming.stat.iastate.edu/CRAN

...and later this...

* Installing *source* package 'rgl' ...
checking for gcc... gcc -std=gnu99
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc -std=gnu99 accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc -std=gnu99 option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -std=gnu99 -E
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc -std=gnu99
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc -std=gnu99 accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for gcc -std=gnu99 option to accept ISO C89... (cached) none needed
checking for libpng-config... no
checking libpng... checking for grep that handles long lines and -e...
/bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking png.h usability... no
checking png.h presence... no
checking for png.h... no
checking for png_read_update_info in -lpng... no
configure: libpng header and lib found
configure: using libpng dynamic linkage
checking for X... no
configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgl'
** Removing '/usr/lib/R/site-library/rgl'
** Restoring previous '/usr/lib/R/site-library/rgl'

The downloaded packages are in
	/tmp/RtmpIW4d37/downloaded_packages
Warning message:
In install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l, contriburl =
contriburl,  :
  installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status
#
I'm definitely out of my league here, but I think that if someone only enters
that code in an Ubuntu system, then they will have only the latest version
of R in Ubuntu, which at this time I think is 2.6.2, instead of 2.8.1, and
Ubuntu only "maintains" a handful of packages, instead of 1600+ right now on
CRAN.  If you want to get the latest R in Ubuntu and download any current
package, it seems like you have to follow a method like I've tried to piece
together.  I hope I'm wrong here.  Cheers.
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

  
    
#
Thanks John, I appreciate it.  It sounds like Emacs is the way to go for an
editor.
John Fox-6 wrote:

  
    
#
Hi Brian,
I'm sure buttons are slow compared to keystrokes, but how do you stop R with
a keystroke, similar to the R interface in Windows?  Thanks.

Sorry about the JGS-JGR goof...just coming across too many new things right
now.  JGR it is.
#
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
No.  If it is that simple to install R under a Debian vaiant of Linux, 
it definitely is easier.  On the other hand, using Emacs is not (as far 
as I know) the thing for novices.  What I would prefer is something that 
is as simple to use as the Windows (or even better, the Mac interface) 
for R.

Tom

  
    
#
For those reading this thread who might be thinking of trying Linux, I
would like to point out that, with Fedora (another distribution of
Linux aside from Ubuntu), the repositories are up to date, and there
seems to be someone connected with Fedora (as well as the R core team)
who is interested in keeping them that way.

[Others should stop reading now.  This is just for those considering
Fedora.]

There are several ways to install programs in the form of "rpm"s.
(Originally stood for "Red Hat Package Manager.")  Perhaps the
simplest is, as root:

yum install R

This gets you a lot of additional rpm's ("dependencies") if you don't
have them.

Fedora also maintains rpm's of various R packages, a seemingly random
selection of them, but you don't need to depend on Fedora for those.
Once R is installed, you can invoke R as root and then say, for
example, from the prompt:
If you want to install ess and xemacs, I think all you need to say is

yum install xemacs-ess-el

which will install, as dependencies, everything else you need,
including xemacs if you don't have it.

Although Ubuntu is recommended for Linux newbies, it may be the case
that Fedora is a little easier, at least about this.  Warning: Fedora
is pure about open-source licenses, which means that many
closed-source programs that you might want, like Adobe Flash, Skype,
and some drivers, won't be there unless you get them yourself (and you
can do that).

Jon
#
On 8 February 2009 at 12:14, Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:
| Hi Dirk,
| Sorry, I'm not trying to drag out the installation process here, but just
| trying to get it to work right in Linux.
| 
|
| Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| > 
| > What is wrong with
| > 
| >      $ sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl
| > 
| 
|  I tried this suggestion, and here was the terminal output:
| 
| r-cran-rgl is already the newest version.
| r-cran-rgl set to manually installed.
| 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Good. You were supposed to stop here :)

| So, just to double-check, I went into R as sudo, entered update.packages(),
| and got this:
| 
| rgl :
|  Version 0.76 installed in /usr/lib/R/site-library 
|  Version 0.82 available at http://streaming.stat.iastate.edu/CRAN

You are confusing

a) having a _pre-compiled binary_ installed (0.76) 
   ===> this implies only libraries for running this

b) having the ability to _locally compile_
   ===> this requires matching header files etc provided by the -dev
   packages.

And a) !=  b).  We provide a) because b) is harder as you discover below. 

Unless you are reasonably experienced with your Linux distro of choice it is
somewhat difficult to build certain packages, especially when they have
hardware dependencies.  

Which is _precisely_ why we provide the binaries.

Now, a good compromise is to look at the _source of pre-built package_ as
this contains the Debian/Ubuntu-specific knowledge that the generic source
does not have. In particular:

Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5.0.0), r-base-dev (>= 2.8.1), cdbs, libgl1-mesa-dev | libgl-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev | libglu-dev, libpng12-dev, libx11-dev, libxt-dev, x11proto-core-dev

leading to install 

	libgl1-mesa-dev or libgl-dev 
	libglu1-mesa-dev or libglu-dev 
	libpng12-dev 
	libx11-dev 
	libxt-dev 
	x11proto-core-dev
	
after which your local build will probably succeed.

There is nice way to semi-automate this, and we need to document it
better. It is somewhat more advanced though.

Hth, Dirk

| ...and later this...
| 
| * Installing *source* package 'rgl' ...
| checking for gcc... gcc -std=gnu99
| checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
| checking whether the C compiler works... yes
| checking whether we are cross compiling... no
| checking for suffix of executables... 
| checking for suffix of object files... o
| checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
| checking whether gcc -std=gnu99 accepts -g... yes
| checking for gcc -std=gnu99 option to accept ISO C89... none needed
| checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -std=gnu99 -E
| checking for gcc... (cached) gcc -std=gnu99
| checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... (cached) yes
| checking whether gcc -std=gnu99 accepts -g... (cached) yes
| checking for gcc -std=gnu99 option to accept ISO C89... (cached) none needed
| checking for libpng-config... no
| checking libpng... checking for grep that handles long lines and -e...
| /bin/grep
| checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
| checking for ANSI C header files... yes
| checking for sys/types.h... yes
| checking for sys/stat.h... yes
| checking for stdlib.h... yes
| checking for string.h... yes
| checking for memory.h... yes
| checking for strings.h... yes
| checking for inttypes.h... yes
| checking for stdint.h... yes
| checking for unistd.h... yes
| checking png.h usability... no
| checking png.h presence... no
| checking for png.h... no
| checking for png_read_update_info in -lpng... no
| configure: libpng header and lib found
| configure: using libpng dynamic linkage
| checking for X... no
| configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
| ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgl'
| ** Removing '/usr/lib/R/site-library/rgl'
| ** Restoring previous '/usr/lib/R/site-library/rgl'
| 
| The downloaded packages are in
| 	/tmp/RtmpIW4d37/downloaded_packages
| Warning message:
| In install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l, contriburl =
| contriburl,  :
|   installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status
| 
| 
| 
| 
| -- 
| View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/installing-R-on-Ubuntu-tp10025949p21902802.html
| Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
| 
| ______________________________________________
| R-help at r-project.org mailing list
| https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
| PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
| and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
#
On 8 February 2009 at 12:23, Paul Heinrich Dietrich wrote:
| 
| I'm definitely out of my league here, but I think that if someone only enters
| that code in an Ubuntu system, then they will have only the latest version
| of R in Ubuntu, which at this time I think is 2.6.2, instead of 2.8.1, and

Please see the README at   http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu

| Ubuntu only "maintains" a handful of packages, instead of 1600+ right now on
| CRAN.  If you want to get the latest R in Ubuntu and download any current
| package, it seems like you have to follow a method like I've tried to piece
| together.  I hope I'm wrong here.  Cheers.

We have been working on providing close to all 1600 packages as .deb
packages.  We have about 1500 built, but so far only on Debian (though Ubuntu
should not be hard as a follow-up, volunteer-resources permitting), and not
in a repository that is publically accessible,. Hopefully we will more to say
about his at useR 2009.

Dirk
| Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| >
| > On 8 February 2009 at 20:36, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
| > | Dear me.  Is the installation of R under Ubuntu really that complex?  I 
| > | have a dual boot machine (Linux / Windows, where I use the latter the 
| > | most) and have plans to try R under Linux, but have not done so yet.  Is 
| > | it possible to simplify the Linux install procedure to make R more 
| > | accessible to novices?
| > 
| > Yes. 'sudo apt-get install r-base ess ggobi' and you have working R, ESS
| > and
| > Ggobi.  Start Emacs, type 'M-x R' and you have an R session inside Emacs.
| > 
| > Is that really easier to accomplish in Windows?
| > 
| 
| -- 
| View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/installing-R-on-Ubuntu-tp10025949p21902883.html
| Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
| 
| ______________________________________________
| R-help at r-project.org mailing list
| https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
| PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
| and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
#
Thanks Dirk, it worked like a charm :)
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

  
    
#
On Sun, 8 Feb 2009, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:

            
You might like JGR, then. 
http://jgr.markushelbig.org/JGR.html

      -thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle
#
On Sun, 2009-02-08 at 16:21 -0500, Jonathan Baron wrote:
Hi Jon,

As much as I love Fedora (and I've used it from Core 1 onwards and
haven't been swayed by Ubuntu's lovely brownness), I should point out
that it need *not* be as simple as you make out on Fedora. Your
install.packages("foo") invocation does require that you have installed
all the build tools and development packages required to compile "foo"
from source.

Where "foo" does not depend upon external libraries being on your system
(and their development headers), it is often as easy as you make out.
Try building "rgl" with a simple Fedora installation however and you'll
soon hit a brick wall. (I, being fairly impatient, just installed
anything mesa or GLU -devel from the yum repo until I got rgl to
compile, but I had to know to look as MESA or GLU or whatever it was...)

As to the version of R in Fedora's package repository being up-to-date,
I think this reflects more the nature of Fedora being a bleeding-edge
distro, whereas Debian is much more focussed on stability. From time to
time on this list, getting the latest version of R on Debian/Ubuntu
comes up and Dirk or someone IIRC points out that the latest version has
been packaged but just not in the stable package repository. The latest
version is there, thanks to the efforts of these third parties, but you
need to know where to grab it from. This is a difference in philosophy
surrounding the different distributions, not an ease of use or
more-up-to-datedness issue.

This all boils down to knowing how to use your distro and knowing a bit
about the packaging systems on Linux and your particular flavour of
Linux. (Something Linux could do a lot better at...)

IMHO, compiling from source on Fedora is easier than dealing with a
mixture of rpm packages in Fedora's package repositories and having to
compile from source those packages that aren't. If you can compile
packages from source then you can (most likely) compile R itself, and
then you can run it from wherever you want and you won't need to run it
as root to install/update packages. And then you can be as bleeding edge
as you like...

My 4p worth (the pound isn't what it once was...)

G
#
On 02/09/09 10:06, Gavin Simpson wrote:
Sorry.  Instead of

yum install R

I should have said

yum install R-devel

I believe that this will install all the build tools needed for almost
all packages, as well as R itself and its dependencies.  I admit I had
trouble with rgl, which compiled on one computer and not another (both
with Fedora).  That was the only time this has happened to me in 3
years.  The error message said it required glu.h.  (Googling for that
discovers many problems, many on Ubuntu forums!)  This is part of
mesa-libGLU-devel, which should probably be listed as a dependency of
R-devel.  This is a bug.  Bugs happen, even in Ubuntu.

On finzi.psych.upenn.edu (my R site), for many years, I had all R
packages installed except the ones that were for Windows only.  In the
last year, to save time and the computer, I've started building the
help files only, except for the smaller and smaller proportion that I
actually use.

Jon
#
The preceived "difficulty" of installing R under whatever flavour of
GNU/Linux in this thread stems from being unfamiliar with the process of the
package management of the flavour of GNU/Linux you use (and in part by the
various distros not having the most recent version of R in their
repositories

People who say "why can't it be as easy as dowloading a self-installing
binary and running that" are trying to fit a round peg (their experience and
understanding of how applications install in M$-windows) in a square hole
(or triangular, hexagonal, or whatever depending on the distribution of
GNU/Linux).

There are pro's and con's to each of the GNU/Linux flavours and its really a
matter of deciding which you like/have invested time in learning.

Irrespective its still simple to install R from source under GNU/Linux...

1) Download source tar-ball
2) Extract and cd to the directory
3) ./configure --prefix=/where/you/want/R/to/go (optionally setting the
install path at this stage)
4) ./make
5) ./make install

...all documented in the FAQ at
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-can-R-be-installed-_0028Unix_0029

This might not be as clean as using the native package management, but does
mean that you'll have the latest version installed.

Neil

(Addendum - I've tried several different distros, starting with RedHat 7.3,
then various versions of Slackware 8 through to 9 before settling on Gentoo,
all were easy to install R in).
#
At 07:58 09/02/2009, Thomas Lumley wrote:
Tom,

For what it is worth
1 - as a long term Windows user and complete Linux novice I found the 
process on Linux (using the Debian pages at CRAN and the r-sig-debian 
help list as an instruction set) fairly straightforward. Some things 
are easier, some harder.
2 - if all you want is a simple editor with syntax highlighting and 
the ability to pipe commands to the running R then you could consider 
Kate which you may already have. It is of course also much more 
powerful than that but you can effortlessly ignore the powerful bits. 
Plus Kate is a cute name.
Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
#
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:51 AM, Neil Shephard <nshephard at gmail.com> wrote:
This is true. However, for the most common Linux distros --Debian, Red
Hat Enterprise / CentOS / Scientific Linux / Fedora, openSUSE and
Ubuntu -- you can install the most recent R compiled for your distro
from

http://<your-nearest-CRAN-mirror>/bin/linux/

In addition, most of the distros have third-party repositories where
you can find the latest version of R. In short, if you have an x86 or
x86_64/amd64 system running almost any Linux, you can find a
pre-compiled R. R is a popular package, and it's pretty easy to find
even for Power PC or some of the obscure architectures.
Many Linux distros do *not* install the development tools by default,
and which ones live in which packages varies by distro. Fedora in
particular is extremely stripped when you install from the LiveCD. You
have to install gcc, make and a couple of other things just to install
VMware Tools, for example, when running Fedora as a VMware guest. For
building R from source and installing R packages, you'll also need to
install gfortran. And many libraries with external dependencies, like
Rgraphviz, will require not only the package itself (graphviz) but
also the C headers, which may have the name "graphviz-devel" on some
distros and some other name on other distros.
I just recently switched from Gentoo to openSUSE. Gentoo usually had
the latest R source in their repository within a day or so of it
coming out of the R Project release cycle. To get it, all you needed
to do was put the package name in the "/etc/portage/package-keywords"
file. And Gentoo, since it is almost all compiled from source, by
nature *does* have all the development tools installed and installs
all the headers when it installs packages.