[R] running previous versions of R

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jul 15, 2011, at 2:58 PM, jstevens wrote:

> I'm running Ubuntu - natty. Forgive me if I sound lost, its been just over a
> week since I switched over from Windows. I originally installed 2.12 using
> the Ubuntu software center, but have now switched to using the terminal.
> 2.9.2 was installed using a .tar.zip file downloaded from cran. Before I
> switched over to Linux I had both versions installed in Windows, but I had
> to switch to Linux because Windows is so limiting on RAM use.
> 
> 
> Upon further poking around I've figured out how to do it. I found the R
> executable file in /usr/lib/R-2.9.2/bin, so entering $/usr/lib/R-2.9.2/bin/R
> starts up version 2.9.2. Thanks for your help.
> 
> 
> I'm running a CRAN package that has not been updated since 2009, and I'm not
> rerunning an old analysis. The problem is that the software I'm using for
> the analysis gives me an error saying that it requires R version 2.4 or
> higher if I try to run it in version 2.10 or higher. I think someone was a
> little sloppy with some code so that the program only looks at two integers
> when verifying the version of R. I've let the author know about it, but the
> program is no longer in development.


Hi,

I am presuming that you obtained the 2.9.2 source tarball for R from CRAN and then compiled it?

Otherwise, you would only have the source files from the extracted archive and R should not otherwise run. There are not pre-compiled tar files of binaries for R on CRAN for Linux.

A couple of other comments:

1. There is a SIG e-mail list for R on Debian based distros, of which Ubuntu is one. Info here:

  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian

I would recommend posting any technical questions related to using R on Ubuntu there. Also, a good *recent* intro book on Ubuntu would not be a bad idea. I was in the same boat about 10 years ago, when I made the transition from Windows to Linux (Red Hat then Fedora), though I have been running OSX for the past two years or so.


2. There are 64 bit versions of R for Windows now, if you have a 64 bit version of Windows running. See the R FAQ for Windows for more info.


A final comment, which is that 2.13.1 is the current version of R, so you should look to upgrade from 2.12.??.

Regards,

Marc