[R] R GUI for Linux?

[Sander Oom]

Hi Charles,

Warm felt sympathies for your struggles. I consider myself a happy GUI 
user and have also struggled with the 'command line' history and lack of 
out-of-the-box functionality associated with Linux. However, Linux does 
have many, many advantages over other OS's, so I will stick to it. That 
said, I am reluctantly suggesting it to others, as there are lots of 
other things one can do on a Saturday afternoon. ;-)

After many long afternoons, I have come to the conclusion that accepting 
what comes as standard is the best approach to using Linux if you do 
have better things to do. I tried ESS, but I found it impenetrable at my 
first try, so gave up.

I run SuSE linux and R without any problem. The RPM was downloaded from 
CRAN and installed without any errors. I run update.packages to 
download, install and refresh all contributed and other packages.

I also looked for an R GUI, but must admit I stopped way before you did. 
I ended up using my favorite editor (Kate, comes standard with KDE) and 
cut and paste code into an R console (available as standard in the Kate 
window). Gives a nice clean window for writing code and running R. Of 
course Kate has code highlighting facilities (as standard). I soon 
realized that the console has a limited buffer for commands, such that 
long code sequences are abruptly ended part way through. Thus I have a 
second console open from which I source whole R files. The setup gives a 
relatively comfortable code debugging environment!

I was amazed when I read the instruction for JGR on Linux. I thought the 
whole point of Java was to create platform independent software. I have 
given up on any instructions that tell me to run 'make'. Linux 
distributions are just to idiosyncratic for it to be worth the effort. 
I'll just wait until Novell packs JGR with the new version of SuSE 
Linux. Even if I have to pay something for the added bonus!

Will keep following the GUI developments with interest,

Sander.


White, Charles E WRAIR-Wash DC wrote:
> I feel your pain. <grin> I am a new Linux user who has spent most of the weekend trying to get a functional R setup. When I installed Fedora Core 3 (FC3) on my home computer, I thought using R in a terminal would be a snap. I installed R using the rpm packages and tried to use it with the FC3 default terminal (GNOME Terminal 2.7.3). Before long, I found out the terminal was rudely discarding output beyond a set number of lines. I could increase the number of lines kept by the terminal but that didn't strike me as an acceptable solution. Cutting to my stress relieving intermediate solution, I am currently using xemacs with ESS as my R programming environment under FC3. Eventually, I will want to run JGR as my programming environment and Rcmdr as both a teaching tool and means to distribute code to some of my clients. On my way to xemacs, I also tried to install emacs and gnomeGUI. I will briefly document my experience with trying to install each of these packages below:
> 
> XEMACS with ESS: XEMACS is within the 'walled garden' of packages tuned specifically to run under FC3 and XEMACS provides a tuned installation for ESS. Since I had already compiled R from source with shared libraries enabled (the rmp does not enable shared libraries), I don't know if XEMACS will work with the rpm version of R. Note also that I installed this package using yum; 'Add or Remove Applications' lists xemacs but wouldn't allow me to install.
> 
> JGR: I have installed jdk1.5.0_03 and MOST of the the output from make looks like JGR is compiling correctly. JavaGD and rJava are not finding jini.h. I don't see an explicit statement of how to start JGR but I assume that is done by typing JGR (or maybe jgr) in a terminal window. Nothing happens. Two potential problems are: (a) I never should have downloaded JavaGD and rJava from CRAN (they won't uninstall, deleting the directories doesn't stop the problem, and I can't use yum to remove R to start over because yum doesn't recognise that R is installed.) or (b) I need to uninstall some of the stray versions of java littering my hard drive. I haven't removed the symbolic link between jre1.5.0_02 and firefox.
> 
> Rcmdr: There are all sorts of things in FC3 that seem to be tcl/tk related but Rcmdr doesn't seem to work with them. Since some are part of the base FC3 installation, I'm nervious about replacing them or installing competing software. Potentially conflicting software in FC3 are listed below:
> 
> tcl.i386                                 8.4.7-2                installed
> tclx.i386                                8.3.5-4                installed
> db4-tcl.i386                             4.2.52-6               base
> postgresql-tcl.i386                      7.4.8-1.FC3.1          updates-released
> ruby-tcltk.i386                          1.8.2-1.FC3.1          updates-released
> tcl-devel.i386                           8.4.7-2                base
> tcl-html.i386                            8.4.7-2                base
> tclx-devel.i386                          8.3.5-4                base
> tclx-doc.i386                            8.3.5-4                base
> 
> EMACS with ESS: A version of EMACS is tuned to FC3 but ESS has to be obtained elsewhere. Installing ESS requires editing the hidden .emacs file. I know how to see hidden files but this one does not appear to be where the ESS directions say to look.
> 
> gnomeGUI: Error message says that I don't have Gnome installed. It would be nice and GNU to have a working copy of gnome GUI.
> 
> I hope you have found my message to be entertaining. If anybody can stop me before I do something else stupid, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> Charles E. White, Senior Biostatistician, MS
> Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
> 503 Robert Grant Ave., Room 1w102
> Silver Spring, MD 20910-1557
> Personal/Professional Site: http://users.starpower.net/cwhite571/professional/
> 
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-- 
--------------------------------------------
Dr Sander P. Oom
Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences,
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa
Tel (work)      +27 (0)11 717 64 04
Tel (home)      +27 (0)18 297 44 51
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Email   sander at oomvanlieshout.net
Web     www.oomvanlieshout.net/sander