[R] "Best" Out of box Linux distro for R

[Mark Myatt]

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


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