Hi Folks, I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though possibly a minority) here. There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that. (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband in the foreseeable future!) I've worked round this in various ways in the past. Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded Linux I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. One can get round it by bothering someone. What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to take someone's time om something which may well not be their proper business. (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm looking at a major download operation, if not by me then by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.) I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> writes: [...]> There's something of a hidden assumption that R users > can readily download whatever they need from CRAN.[...]> What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along > with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and > maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also > the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable > charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to > take someone's time om something which may well not be > their proper business.I have been in a similar situation a fair bit in the past and understand your position. Now I'm back in the UK and have a reasonably fast broadband connection at home I'd be willing to help out now and then. I guess that to make this work more generally we would need to work out how to make sure that only the CDs get burned and not the prospective "customer" or "supplier". As for charges, I think I'd only be interested in covering costs of the CDs and postage. I don't have industrial strength hardware so I could not get into mass production. Perhaps we could establish informal groups of "R buddies" where, for example, I help you and a small number of other people out each time there is an update and we establish some kind of trust between ourselves, rather than new people coming to me each time. People could sign up to be "suppliers" and be allocated or choose a group of people they provide the service to. I would feel comfortable with something like this working for people who have been on the R-help list for a while and have some recgonised identity, and something to lose in terms of reputation if they take advantage. But, it is possible that new users might need it the most and, by definition, we might not feel comfortable dealing with new people. Dave -- David Whiting University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
There was a similar thread earlier this year http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/03/1785.html I think I previously made the suggestion that you could download this from an internet cafe. I am not sure if these cafes allow you to plug in your own laptop or burn it for you. If you have a DVD readable CDROM and a DVD writer, you could opt for that. Failing that, you could see if someone in your local R-group or university department has the latest R on disc. But the real question is that if there are enough people on slow connection that are interested in obtaining R. Regards, Adai On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 21:39, Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:> Hi Folks, > > I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though > possibly a minority) here. > > There's something of a hidden assumption that R users > can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. > > Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, > so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the > question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over > 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN > (including contributed packages and documentation) > is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably > wouldn't be interested in all of that. > > (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband > in the foreseeable future!) > > I've worked round this in various ways in the past. > Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the > basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded Linux > I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium > once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the > contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access > did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. > One can get round it by bothering someone. > > What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along > with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and > maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also > the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable > charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to > take someone's time om something which may well not be > their proper business. > > (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence > of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly > a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm > looking at a major download operation, if not by me then > by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure > of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And > I'm sure I'm not the only one.) > > I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. > > Best wishes to all, > Ted. > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] > Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html-- Adaikalavan Ramasamy ramasamy at cancer.org.uk Centre for Statistics in Medicine http://www.ihs.ox.ac.uk/csm/ Cancer Research UK Tel : 01865 226 677 Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford Fax : 01865 226 962
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:39:14 -0000 (GMT), (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> wrote:>Hi Folks, > >I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though >possibly a minority) here. > >There's something of a hidden assumption that R users >can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. > >Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, >so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the >question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over >2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN >(including contributed packages and documentation) >is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably >wouldn't be interested in all of that. > >(And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband >in the foreseeable future!)The tarballs for the base source installation are only around 10 MB. That's only 50 minutes for you to do the main download. Then you can pick and choose what other packages to install. (It's 23 MB to download the Windows binary; I don't know the size of the Linux binaries.) Is it really worth setting up a duplication service? How much would you think is reasonable to pay for a CD to be mailed to you? Duncan Murdoch
Ted, On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 09:39:14PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:> Hi Folks, > > I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though > possibly a minority) here. > > There's something of a hidden assumption that R users > can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. > > Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, > so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the > question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over > 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN > (including contributed packages and documentation) > is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably > wouldn't be interested in all of that.I'll cc this reply to Mark Walker. His shop, budgetlinuxcds.com / blcds.com, is one of the resellers of my Quantian 'scientific / cluster-computing workstation on a bootable dvd' Linux distribution / environment (see http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian for more on this). Mark has been consistently responsive while offering a low-cost cd/dvd service (of which I receive no cut, in case you're wondering about disclaimers). I think he'd be happy to add regular snapshots of certain portions of http://cran.r-project.org/src/, maybe for the sources and/or windows binaries, for his failry reasonable fees.> (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband > in the foreseeable future!) > > I've worked round this in various ways in the past. > Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the > basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded LinuxI cannot resist mentioning that Debian will almost surely have the best R coverage with R, several dozen CRAN packages, ESS and many other goodies. Debian may well not be for everyone, but maybe Ubuntu will make the initial experience more pleasant. Hope this helps, Dirk> I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium > once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the > contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access > did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. > One can get round it by bothering someone. > > What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along > with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and > maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also > the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable > charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to > take someone's time om something which may well not be > their proper business. > > (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence > of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly > a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm > looking at a major download operation, if not by me then > by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure > of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And > I'm sure I'm not the only one.) > > I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. > > Best wishes to all, > Ted. > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] > Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html-- If your hair is standing up, then you are in extreme danger. -- http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfp/cockpit-phys/fp1ex3.htm
On 16 Nov 2004, at 23:39, (Ted Harding) wrote:> > Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, > so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the > question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over > 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN > (including contributed packages and documentation) > is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably > wouldn't be interested in all of that.5 CDs sounds 4 too many. I once burnt CDs for my students, and they fitted nicely in one CD (Windows binaries, all packages as Windows binaries and sources, contributed documents). I guess you can fit Windows, Mac and some Linux binaries all in one CD. Now comes my suggestion to CRAN maintainer: this all would be easier, if you would produce a CD image file ('iso') that would contain a snapshot of the latest version: main binaries, all contributed packages, and docs. Getting somebody to help downloading this iso would be much easier than trying to collect all first and then make up your own cd image. Actually, only Windows and Mac users need binary versions of packages. The former because they don't have tools to install from source, the latter because they don't know that they have the tools (being command line challenged). To Dirk Eddelbuettel: Yes indeed, Ubuntu gives human face to Debian and is a much more pleasant experience. However, changing OS for R may be asking too much. Further, Ubuntu/Debian comes with a tiny and biased selection of packages, and if that's not your kind of bias, you have got to go to the Internet again. Further, Ubuntu (and other Linuxes) lag behind R. The current Ubuntu release comes with R 1.9.1, and it won't be upgraded but in the next release scheduled for April 2005 (and just in the same time as the next R, so that Ubuntu will be one R version off again). I guess the lag is even worse in packages. cheers, jari oksanen -- Jari Oksanen, Oulu, Finland