[R] Moving to Mac OS X

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi,

On Sep 11, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Noah Silverman wrote:
> 3) I purposefully chose NOT to install 64bit R.  I have a dual-core  
> machine.  With the 32 bit version, R will happily keep one core  
> running at 100%, but then I have other core free for my "regular"  
> work.

Using 64bit R shouldn't change your CPU usage, so if you want to use  
it to deal with larger data, feel free to do so ... unless you  
explicitly write code to use >1 cpu, you'll still have another cpu  
free to do with what you will (assuming you have enough ram).

-steve

> On 9/11/09 10:32 AM, Marc Schwartz wrote:
>> On Sep 11, 2009, at 12:15 PM, Victor Manuel Garcia Guerrero wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have been using R on Windows for a long time, but now I am ready  
>>> to move to Mac OS X, but I was just wondering if R works better on  
>>> Mac than on Windows. This is because I had some memory size issues  
>>> in the past.
>>>
>>> Another question is if some of you know an R editor for Mac (just  
>>> like Tinn-R).
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
>> The notion of "better" is always in the eyes of the useR and will  
>> depend upon specific criteria.
>>
>> OSX can run R in both 32 bit and 64 bit modes and indeed the  
>> default OSX download for R provided by Simon installs and supports  
>> both. If you use the 32 bit version, then from a memory management  
>> standpoint, you will not see demonstrable gains over Windows.  
>> However, with the 64 bit version, you will avail yourself of a much  
>> larger memory address space as compared to running 32 bit R on  
>> Windows. That of course presumes that you have a lot of RAM in your  
>> Mac to actually take advantage of the larger address space.
>>
>> The 64 bit memory address space is also available via Linux, with  
>> appropriate hardware.
>>
>>
>> You might want to review the R OSX FAQ:
>>
>>  http://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/RMacOSX-FAQ.html
>>
>> and also note that there is a OSX specific e-mail list:
>>
>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>
>>
>> As far as editors, I am not familiar with the details of Tinn-R,  
>> but ESS/Emacs is available for OSX and this is what I use  
>> (continuing what I had been using on Linux for the past number of  
>> years).  Others will likely be able to provide other  
>> recommendations and you might want to search the R-SIG-Mac list  
>> archives as no doubt there have been such discussions in the past.
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> Marc Schwartz
>>
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.

--
Steve Lianoglou
Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
   |  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
   |  Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact