R help - Oct 2011 - Are they fully identical: WinBUGS and OpenBUGS; R2WinBUGS and R2OpenBUGS

Hello ALL!
I am running Linux, Fedora 15 64-bits, and R on it. I need to use
WinBUGS and R2WinBUGS, but as far as I read, WinBUGS is closed project,
to be continued with/as OpenBUGS. Thus, I have found R2OpenBUGS on
OpenBUGS Contributed Code (http://openbugs.info/w/UserContributedCode),
not on CRAN. Author(s) states that it is equivalent for R2WinBUGS. I
tried briefly, and realized few minor differences. However, it seems to
work. I wonder if anyone checked thoroughly equivalence of WinBUGS and
OpenBUGS, and R2WinBUGS and R2OpenBUGS.
Please, share your experience with us!

All the best,
PM


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Petar Milin <pmilin <at> ff.uns.ac.rs> writes:
> 
> Hello ALL!
> I am running Linux, Fedora 15 64-bits, and R on it. I need to use
> WinBUGS and R2WinBUGS, but as far as I read, WinBUGS is closed project,
> to be continued with/as OpenBUGS. Thus, I have found R2OpenBUGS on
> OpenBUGS Contributed Code (http://openbugs.info/w/UserContributedCode),
> not on CRAN. Author(s) states that it is equivalent for R2WinBUGS. I
> tried briefly, and realized few minor differences. However, it seems to
> work. I wonder if anyone checked thoroughly equivalence of WinBUGS and
> OpenBUGS, and R2WinBUGS and R2OpenBUGS.
> Please, share your experience with us!
   See <http://www.openbugs.info/w/OpenVsWin> for differences between
Open- and WinBUGS.  Lots of people still use WinBUGS/R2WinBUGS on Linux,
via WINE ...  The BUGS ecosystem is a little more complicated than it
used to be (with the existence of OpenBUGS and JAGS in addition to
WinBUGS, and the addition of BRugs, R2OpenBUGS, rjags, R2jags 
interfaces to the R2WinBUGS interface).  I don't know of any systematic
comparisons, though.

  good luck,
    Ben Bolker