[R] R + Linux

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 6 June 2008 at 16:18, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:
| Any of the three distros mentioned are sure to be fine.
| Personally, I find the sysadmin tool in opensuse to be
| fantastic for a novice.
| 
| It comes down to preference.  Try some live versions of the distros to
| see what you like best.

While that is certainly true, there is a difference that doesn't get
mentioned as much. 

On Debian + Ubuntu you also get numerous add-ons and extension that the other
distros may not have such as
 - 60+ packages from CRAN already in the distro
 - the ESS emacs add-on
 - out-of-the box RPy (R/Python) support
 - Ggobi and rggobi for visualization
 - Rkward as a friendly GUI
 - bindings from R to Shogun for data-mining
 - littler for scripting
 - out-of-the box Rmpi / Open MPI support
and a few things I am probably forgetting.

As you say, preferences. The ease of installation with Ubuntu (and also with
the more recent Debian installers) coupled with the richer set of packages
tilts this at least in my book.  But that's just my $0.02.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.