[R] I am surprised (and a little irritated)

[louis homer]

Suse 10.0 needs to be upgraded. You could look for a very helpful previous 
posting by:
 
Ro <villegas.ro at gmail.com>
  To: 
"Detlef Steuer" <detlef.steuer at hsu-hamburg.de>
  CC: 
r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
  Date: 
Sunday 15:57:22

You can get a suse 10.0 RPM at the CRAN site ( http://cran.r-project.org/ )

If you try to install with Yast you will find you are missing two support 
files which you can get at:

http://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS/inst-source/

the rpm's you will need are:

blas-3.0-926.i586.rpm
gcc-fortran-4.0.2_20050901-3.i586.rpm

then you should be able to install the RPM you got from the cran site


On Wednesday 19 April 2006 13:48, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> Gabor Csardi <csardi at rmki.kfki.hu> writes:
> > Tom,
> >
> > I'm irritated as well. Your email should go to some suse mailing list,
> > this is a suse problem, it has (almost) nothing to do with R.
>
> Well, there's a maintainer of the SuSE packages, to whom you can
> complain. It is possible to put better package dependencies in the
> RPMs (Fedora Extras does this) but there's only the one maintainer on
> SuSE and it could well be that it would take more time than he has.
>
> > Unfortunately i can't help you (even if i wanted), because i don't want
> > to read the suse manuals. But if you want to use suse you may consider
> > reading them.
> >
> > Gabor
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 09:05:22PM +0200, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
> > > I have started with using R on Windows, and I am really happy about
> > > the system.  Now, one of my other ambitions is to learn how to use
> > > Linux, so yesterday I downloaded OpenSuse and installed that.  The
> > > next problem was to try to use R with Linux.  And there I met the
> > > wall.  I've understood that RPM's are somewhat like installing
> > > programs on Windows, so that was downloaded and started with YAST.
>
> Actually, they're not. On Windows, software typically comes in
> monolithic blocks. Nearly everything included, because the basic OS
> provides very little. On Linux distributions, you have a large
> "jigsaw" of pieces that fit together in multiple ways. Ideally, each
> piece contains information about which of the other pieces it needs,
> but unfortunately there is no automatic way to generate such
> dependencies, so it is possible to get them wrong.
>
> > > And got some error messages about missing stuff.  The first reactions
> > > is surprise -- there must be an error in the installation procedure.
> > > I have never (well, almost) met an installation procedure on Windows
> > > that did not include everything needed.  And the installation of R on
> > > Windows was very smooth.  Then I discover to my big surprise that the
> > > readme file says that I need to have eight installed packages.  Then
> > > it says "Most of them are included in a standard install".  Sigh.
> > > Then the problem next is to find out which of the eight I already have
> > > and which ones I need to locate somewhere.  Where can I find them I
> > > wonder.  Somewhere on the net?  And that is how far I got today.
> > >
> > > So, one of the complaints I have is that the instructions for
> > > installing R on Linux are very cryptic, and to a large extent assume
> > > that you already know Linux.  Which I do not.  And I expect
> > > instructions on installing should be simple and clear.  But I am a
> > > very experienced computer user, so I really expect to be able to
> > > understand instructions.  I cannot expect my students to manage what I
> > > cannot manage myself, so Linux is out, or at least Suse Linux.  And
> > > that is a pity, for a number of reasons.
> > >
> > > The second is just as much surprise at the installation procedure.
> > > Under Windows there are any number of installers which make it easy
> > > for a programmer to put together all the files needed and place them
> > > in the right place.
> > >
> > > And simeone should get the OpenSuse people to include R in the
> > > installation.
> > >
> > > Tom
> > >
> > > +----------------------------------------------------------------+
> > >
> > > | Tom Backer Johnsen, Psychometrics Unit,  Faculty of Psychology |
> > > | University of Bergen, Christies gt. 12, N-5015 Bergen,  NORWAY |
> > > | Tel : +47-5558-9185                        Fax : +47-5558-9879 |
> > > | Email : backer at psych.uib.no    URL : http://www.galton.uib.no/ |
> > >
> > > +----------------------------------------------------------------+
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
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> >
> > --
> > Csardi Gabor <csardi at rmki.kfki.hu>    MTA RMKI, ELTE TTK
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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