[R] from XPPro to Linux what distribution to use for R ?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 10 November 2007 at 13:41, Uwe Ligges wrote:
| phguardiol at aol.com wrote:
[...]
| I'd recommend to compile your version of R yourself from sources. It's 
| easy, just follow the R Installation and Administration manual.

I think you need a more nuanced view than to always recommend compilation
from source.  There are a lot of small details one can get wrong which would
still result in a version of R that runs, but possibly with fewer
capabilities(), without automatic support for Atlas BLAS, or some other
shortcoming.  We see enough messages from people who fail outright to build R
themselves.

Many distributions will work with R, and may want to choose one that your
friends or colleagues are familiar with in case you need help.  

That said, some Linux distributions have more complete R support than others
when it comes to related packages.  Debian and Ubuntu several dozen CRAN
packages pre-built, and also offer ESS (for working with R via Emacs), Ggobi
(another visualisation package that can be accessed from R), RPy (Python
interface) and more.  So barring other considerations, I'd say try Debian or
Ubuntu.

Lastly, Brian Ripley remarked

On 10 November 2007 at 14:46, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
[...]
| Although there are binaries on CRAN for several distributions, they are 
| also to found on some of the distributions' own repositories and 
| elsewhere.

which is true, yet the in-distro version may also be dated and the reason why
we keep current versions of R in the bin/linux/debian and bin/linux/ubuntu
directories, thanks to the work of Vincent and Johannes.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.