"Graphics history" in UNIX

Dear Roberto

stimulates a very basic question: "Is it possible to avoid building from
source using R in Kubuntu?

Yes.

I shifted over from MS only recently. In Windows I used to easily download
packages and use them.
Now, every time I downloaded a new piece, I had the impression that building
from source was necessary.
Am I wrong?

No. Because of the huge diversity of Linux platforms it is not
practical to provide binaries for all or even most of them. Hence, as
a general rule, under Linux you need to compile R packages.

On Debian-based distros you can circumvent and use cran2deb (reference
provided by Paul). Beware though that cran2deb specifically targets
Debian testing i386 and amd64 (support for the latter is temporarily
dead). Dirk has repeatedly warned against using them on Ubuntus, but
there were reports of successful usage so you might want to try it,
too.

Regards
Liviu