[R] Power PC with a linux distribution and R

[Wojciech Grzemski]

On  Tuesday, 2008-09-16, Steve Revilak wrote:
>> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:30:46 -0400
>> From: "stephen sefick"
>> Subject: [R] Power PC with a linux distribution and R
>> This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of
>> using R on that operating system.  I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I
>> am going to install linux on.  Is there a better, worse, or perhaps
>> easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I
>> should look at.  I appreciate your help.  I didn't post this in the
>> sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere
>> else.
>> thanks
>
> I have an iBook G4 (1 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM) that's running Debian.
> Debian's installer is pretty friendly.  For me, the most difficult
> part of the installation was getting 3-button mouse emulation to work
> with the iBook's 1-button keypad.  Beyond that, the installation and
> setup was easy.
>
> Why did I install Debian on an iBook?  Curiosity more than anything
> else.  I've worked with Redhat-based linux distibutions for years, and
> I wanted to see what Debian was like.
>
> One thing you might want to keep in mind -- some of Debian's PPC
> packages are a little on the old side (for example, R 2.4.0).  That
> may or may not be an issue for you.
>
> On Mac OS, you may want to try running R in an X11 xterm (as opposed
> to running R.app); that's essentially what you'll see under Linux..
>
> Steve
>

I had R installed on a G3 iBook running Gentoo about a year ago
(switched to a different hardware since then ;-)).  And I don't
remember any major issues.  It required some patience to install (in
Gentoo box applications are downloaded as a source code and compiled on
the target machine), but as a plus one would have a rather recent
version of the program... 

I'd recommend it.  Gentoo -- as a system -- may require you to read some
documentation to install and run it at first, but I think it's well worth it.

Best,
-- 
Wojciech Grzemski <wgrzemski at gmail.com>     "To Carthage then I came..."