Dear r-devel team, By default, R_LIBS_USER is set to $HOME/R. I think that it would be better to conform with XDG Base Directory Specification ( https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html ) and use $XDG_DATA_HOME/R (~/.local/share/R) instead. P.S. This message was originally sent to Debian bug report system ( https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=928653). Debian R maintainer Dirk Eddelbuettel recommended sending this issue to r-devel. -- Best regards, S.V. Matsievskiy