[R] Off-topic? Linux laptop for R

Steve Lianoglou lianoglou.steve at gene.com
Sun Aug 11 23:40:25 CEST 2013


Hi,

I have no real input here from personal experience, but the author of
the coderspiel blog has these two "recent" posts about his experience
with Ubuntu on (what seem to be) two very nice machines:

The latest is a Vaio Pro of some sort. Ubuntu is a bit difficult to
install, but doable:

http://code.technically.us/post/55425026899/vaio-pro-for-programming

An earlier post talks about the ThinkPad Carbon X1:

http://code.technically.us/post/50837506478/senistive-touchpads-and-ubuntu

Which apparently supports ubuntu quite easily (out of the box, I think).

>From quickly skimming, it seems like his only gripe with the X1 is
that it has a large monitor.

I can't really imagine why any of these laptops would have a problem
running R. I agree with what (I think) Rolf is saying in that your
biggest issue will be to find a laptop that runs your favorite flavor
of Linux well. Once you satisfy that constraint, I'm relatively sure
that the chances of running R "well" is quite high. Whether or not the
machine can run R well doesn't say much about how easily linux will be
installed (and fully functional).

HTH,
-steve


On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Rolf Turner <rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
> I think that Hasan Diwan's assertion is a bit of an over-simplification.  I
> have a Toshiba Satellite
> L850 that has no problems of any sort running R.  However it *does* have
> problems with WiFi.
> The WiFi drivers for my laptop won't work under (any?) Linux system.
> Apparently (I don't completely
> grok the concepts here) this is because the drivers are proprietary and so
> Linux developers can't
> get at the code.
>
> My previous laptop (an elderly IBM ThinkPad) had no problems with WiFi, at
> least not after I
> upgraded to the then most recent versions of Fedora and later Ubuntu.
>
> I have managed to work around the WiFi problem by using a USB WiFi device.
> Be careful,
> but.  The first one I got, an ASUS USB-N10, was advertised to have "Linux
> support" but
> after much travail (and after having got a great deal of expert advice) I
> decided it was
> no go.  I am currently using an EnGenius EUB9801 which seems to work
> smoothly.  I have
> also ordered a "Penguin Wireless G USB Adapter for GNU / Linux" from
> ThinkPenguin.com,
> but it hasn't arrived yet.  (Being shipped from the USA to New Zealand.)
> The ThinkPenguin
> people seem to have their heads screwed on right, and answered my inquiry
> promptly,
> thoroughly and comprehensibly.
>
> I hope this is of some relevance to someone!
>
>     cheers,
>
>         Rolf Turner
>
>
>
> On 12/08/13 06:47, Hasan Diwan wrote:
>>
>> Any laptop that performs well with Linux will perform acceptably with R
>> and
>> vice versa. -- H
>>
>>
>> On 11 August 2013 11:03, Mitchell Maltenfort <mmalten at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone recommend a laptop that performs well running R under Linux?
>>> Thanks.
>
>
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-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Computational Biologist
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Genentech



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