[R] CDs for R?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

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 Linux

I 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
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