On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Mark Johnson <mark at vector-group.com> wrote:
Mr. Bates, I'm a relatively new Ubuntu user trying to understand how to download and install R (I've already loaded the Vista version) I noted your name in the distribution files for R for Ubuntu. ?Since you're listed as an uploader, I am hoping you can answer my questions or direct me to the correct person.
At one time Dirk Eddelbuettel and I were listed as co-maintainers of the R packages for Debian (and hence for Ubuntu) but Dirk was doing all the work so I asked that he get all the credit.
Is there an instruction file for the Ubuntu neophyte? ?Something that describes which files comprise the download and instructions for installation?
You can use the packages in the Ubuntu distribution but they are generally out-of-date. We have an unfortunate habit of releasing new versions of R just after the next version of Ubuntu is frozen. But not to worry - there are instructions on any CRAN archive, e.g. http://cran.us.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu on how to install R and associated packages on Ubuntu from the CRAN archive which has the latest releases. There is also an active Special Interest Group (SIG) mailing list for R on Debian or Ubuntu, which I have taken the liberty of cc:'ing on this reply. In the future I would recommend sending such questions to that list rather than to me. You are more likely to get a faster response from the list.
I used SPlus for a long time till my old version no longer ran on the current version of windows. ?I was glad to see R is out here, and have downloaded it for Vista and it works fine, though it will take me some practice before I will be comfortable with it. Recently I replaced the motherboard and updated components on an old PC and installed UBUNTU on that. ?I was trying to download and install R for Ubuntu, but where I got one download and install file for Vista, there are a LOT of different files for Ubuntu, and I don't know how to proceed. From a historical perspective, I used a predecessor tool known at AT&T Bell Labs as "Statlib" (just like the statistical repository). ?I'm unsure of the historical development path, but believe Statlib was a precursor of R and S, but was based on an unmaintainable codebase of hundreds of thousands of lines of undocumented Fortran spaghetti code which led to the development of R and S, and eventually to SPlus. Warmest Regards, Mark Johnson Principal Vector Group Services PH: ?972-370-1515 CELL: ?214-606-0553 EMAIL: ?mark at vector-group.com TWITTER: ?VGPricing +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Albert Einstein +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+