Newbie Questions

I have followed the read me file.

Forgive my ignorance of Debian but I get messages like:

Couldn't stat source package list http://cran.wustl.edu etch-cran/  
Packages

which is not particularly helpful to me. In addition the read me  
file instructions "install as usual" are not helpful because I have  
not installed as usual before. :)

Here is a very basic question for debian -- should I type:  apt-get  
install pkgname or aptitude install pkgname. They seem to attempt to  
do the same things but I get different results.

Thanks for your patience.

On 7/25/08, Vincent Goulet <vincent.goulet at act.ulaval.ca> wrote:  
Michael,

I think most of your issues will be answered in the Debian README on  
CRAN:

       http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/

I would recommend removing the version of R you compiled yourself  
and rather opt for the binaries provided on CRAN for etch by Johannes.

HTH    Vincent

Le ven. 25 juil. ? 12:37, Michael Conklin a ?crit :

I am new to Linux (not to R) and I am experimenting with a Linux  
machine
with Debian etch and the Gnome desktop environment installed. Since  
the
stable release has R2.4 I elected to build R from sources and was  
able to
successfully install R2.71.  I had some trouble installing some  
packages
(specifically the XML package) and saw advice on the list on how to  
install
R binaries using aptitude.  Now, I apparently have 2 versions of R  
installed
and depending on how I start R I get different versions. If I start  
R via
the Gnome menu I get R2.4 in a terminal window. If I type R in a  
terminal
window that I have opened I get R2.71.  In both cases R.home() shows  
the
same directory /usr/lib/R.  I seem to have a lot of trouble  
understanding
where things are and how to control profile files and start up  
options on
the Debian system.  Any advice would be most appreciated.

Michael Conklin

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