[R] R on an Asus Eee PC (step-by-step guide)

[Viechtbauer Wolfgang (STAT)]

Dear All,

A while back, the question was raised whether R would run on an Eee PC:

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e3/help/07/12/6564.html

There were some positive responses and some suggestions for getting this to work:

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e3/help/07/12/7244.html

For those who would like a step-by-step guide, here it is. I hope somebody might find this useful.

1) open up a terminal window (Ctrl-Alt-t)
2) get root access (su, then enter password)
3) cd /etc/apt/
4) pico sources.list (to edit the software repositories list)
5) at the bottom, add the following line:

deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free

6) save and exit with Ctrl-O and Ctrl-X
7) get connected to the internet (I assume you know how to do that)
8) apt-get update (to update the package index files)

(you may get a warning about a missing public key; you can ignore this)

9) apt-get install libgfortran1
10) apt-get install tk8.4

(both of these packages are needed before you can install r-base)

You could, at this point, also install r-base from the xandros repository. However, it is version 2.4 or something like that, so let's not do that and instead get an up-to-date version.

11) again, go to /etc/apt/ (if you are not there anymore) and edit sources.list
12) remove the line you added under (5) and add the following line:

deb http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/ stable/

(the "cran.r-project.org" could be replaced with your favorite mirror).

13) apt-get update (again, missing public key error can be ignored)
14) apt-get install r-base

This may take a minute, depending on the speed of your connection. That's it. Now type "exit" to become a regular user again and you should be able to start R by just typing R. You may also remove the line you added under (12) from the sources.list file.

Best,

-- 
Wolfgang Viechtbauer 
 Department of Methodology and Statistics 
 University of Maastricht, The Netherlands 
 http://www.wvbauer.com/