At the risk of starting a holy war, I'd like opinions on the "best" current Linux distribution to run "out of box" with current versions of R. I note rpms for various versions of RedHat, SUSE, Mandrake, and Debian. I've had experience with RH 7.1 & 7.2 and it hasn't been entirely pretty. I understand that 7.3 is a bit "better", but have also read that SUSE 8 may be the most "complete". I've also read of difficulties people have had installing (compiling, linking, running?) R with current Debian distributions. Since I have access to any of these distributions fairly inexpensively, I'm seeking opinions from experienced users on which they've found to be the "easiest" to use with R. In particular, which versions come with all the necessary compilation and linking tools as part of the standard installation? Which versions require updated tools? Any advice/opinions welcome. If this is off-topic, feel free to email me b/c. Thanks, ====================Dr. Marc R. Feldesman Professor and Chairman Anthropology Department Portland State University 1721 SW Broadway Portland, Oregon 97201 email: feldesmanm at pdx.edu phone: 503-725-3081 fax: 503-725-3905 http://web.pdx.edu/~h1mf PGP Key Available On Request ===================== "Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." P.J. O'Rourke Powered by Optiplochoerus and Windows 2000 (scary isn't it?) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>>>>> "marc" == Marc Feldesman <feldesmanm at pdx.edu> writes:marc> At the risk of starting a holy war, I'd like opinions on the "best" This is just like asking "what's the best statistical analysis" without mentioning your data, what you know, and what you can do. and no, I'm not asking you to send that to the list, either! If you are fairly computer savvy AND the machine is on a fast connection, go with Debian/Woody or Debian/Sid. You'll at least find out if you really are savvy. "apt-get" and "dselect" are great (once you understand them). R is pretty up-to-date, consistent, and coherent them. Dirk E., who maintains them packages for Debian, is on top of things, but currently out-of-town so won't answer for a while (actually, he's in Seattle, on vacation :-). Else, I don't see any generic reasons for preferring any of the RPM based distros over another. I do see strong specific and situational reasons for preferring one over others. I'm not going to go into this any further, since it is COMPLETELY off-topic. best, -tony -- A.J. Rossini Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics U. of Washington Biostatistics rossini at u.washington.edu FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net rossini at scharp.org -------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ ---------------- FHCRC: M: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email UW: Th: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286)|Change last 4 digits of phone to FAX (my tuesday/wednesday/friday locations are completely unpredictable.) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Marc Feldesman <feldesmanm at pdx.edu> writes:>At the risk of starting a holy war, I'd like opinions on the "best" current >Linux distribution to run "out of box" with current versions of R. I note >rpms for various versions of RedHat, SUSE, Mandrake, and Debian. I've had >experience with RH 7.1 & 7.2 and it hasn't been entirely pretty. I >understand that 7.3 is a bit "better", but have also read that SUSE 8 may >be the most "complete". I've also read of difficulties people have had >installing (compiling, linking, running?) R with current Debian >distributions. > >Since I have access to any of these distributions fairly inexpensively, I'm >seeking opinions from experienced users on which they've found to be the >"easiest" to use with R. In particular, which versions come with all the >necessary compilation and linking tools as part of the standard >installation? Which versions require updated tools?I use SuSE 7.3 and R runs fine on that. The only problem is that the SuSE specific RPMs lag a few versions behind current releases. This does not appear to be true of RH and Debian. On a Linux point, SuSE is currently closer to the Linux Standards Base (LSB) than most other distros and that should make building and installing much easier in the future. If you are happy compiling R yourself then it matter little what distro you use as long as it is reasonably up to date (they will all have the required compilation and linking tools), if you prefer packaged binaries then go for the best supported distro and that is (currently) RH or Debian. Mark -- Mark Myatt -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._