[R-sig-Debian] Upgrading R on my EEE PC netbook

Mike Cheetham mcheetha at usc.edu
Thu Dec 1 20:48:18 CET 2011 

I think switching from Xandros may be the simplest answer in the long term.

I abandoned Xandros on my Eee 701 and switched it to Ubuntu 10.10 which 
I found an OK combination (I haven't upgraded as I hardly ever use that 
machine now, I use 11.10 on my main PC).  Installation (rather than 
running the entire OS) from a USB stick was not too difficult as I 
recall, although if you can find someone who will lend you a USB CD 
drive installation from a CD would be incredibly simple.

Regards

Mike

On 12/01/2011 03:00 AM, r-sig-debian-request at r-project.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:33:10 +0000
> From: Michael Dewey<info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk>
> To: r-sig-debian at r-project.org
> Subject: [R-sig-Debian] Upgrading R on my EEE PC netbook
> Message-ID:<Zen-1RVm9O-0008RP-T3 at smarthost03.mail.zen.net.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> I have been successfully been using R on my EEE PC for some while
> now. Although it uses Xandros I have been able to install various
> pieces of software by pretending that it was Debian etch. Johannes
> was kind enough to continue providing binaries on CRAN for a while
> but I think I am the only person still living in the past as CRAN
> etch is currently stuck at 2.11.0 and I cannot rely on him to be my
> personal IT support for ever. So I decided to go it alone despite all
> the warnings against such behaviour on this list.
>
> My plan A was to go for a mixed installation by installing from
> squeeze and risk that this would update some other software and
> chance it breaking something.
> So I pointed my entries in sources.list at the squeeze Debian
> repository and at the CRAN squeeze repository and did
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo -s install r-base r-base-dev
> and got the following response
> Reading package lists...
> Building dependency tree...
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.
> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>     r-base-dev: Depends: build-essential but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: g++ but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: gfortran but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: libncurses5-dev but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: libreadline-dev
>                 Depends: libjpeg-dev
>                 Depends: libpcre3-dev but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: libpng12-dev but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed
>                 Depends: libbz2-dev but it is not going to be installed
>
> Now the funny thing is that if I do
> which gfortran
> it tells me I have gfortran on my path.
>
> Before I move on to Plan B which is to download the sources and
> compile them myself would anyone like to advise me what is going
> wrong and whether this will mean that Plan B is doomed to fail before I start.
>
> Plan C is to run one of the Debian or Ubuntu tailored EEE PC versions
> off a USB stuck but I find the documentation for doing that hard to grasp.
>
> You might find it helpful to know that more or less all I know of
> Linux is gained from reading this list and that I am still at the
> stage where I regard setting up a symbolic link as a major achievement.
>
>
> Michael Dewey
> info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
> http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk/home.html
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:51:30 -0500
> From: John C Nash<nashjc at uottawa.ca>
> To: Michael Dewey<info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk>
> Cc: r-sig-debian at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-Debian] Upgrading R on my EEE PC netbook
> Message-ID:<4ED65102.4040605 at uottawa.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I don't know how committed you are to the Xandros interface. I am friends with some of the
> people who built that distro here in Ottawa. They did a good job, but the distro is now
> dead, and they don't use it themselves any more, so you will definitely be on your own.
>
> For what it is worth, I've found R runs very nicely on the Eee's using CrunchBang linux,
> which is a debian squeeze variant. I can use the R debian packages.
>
> Best, JN
>
>
> On 11/30/2011 10:33 AM, Michael Dewey wrote:
>> I have been successfully been using R on my EEE PC for some while now. Although it uses
>> Xandros I have been able to install various pieces of software by pretending that it was
>> Debian etch. Johannes was kind enough to continue providing binaries on CRAN for a while
>> but I think I am the only person still living in the past as CRAN etch is currently stuck
>> at 2.11.0 and I cannot rely on him to be my personal IT support for ever. So I decided to
>> go it alone despite all the warnings against such behaviour on this list.
>>
>> My plan A was to go for a mixed installation by installing from squeeze and risk that this
>> would update some other software and chance it breaking something.
>> So I pointed my entries in sources.list at the squeeze Debian repository and at the CRAN
>> squeeze repository and did
>> sudo apt-get update
>> sudo -s install r-base r-base-dev
>> and got the following response
>> Reading package lists...
>> Building dependency tree...
>> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
>> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
>> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
>> or been moved out of Incoming.
>> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>>
>> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>>    r-base-dev: Depends: build-essential but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: g++ but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: gfortran but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: libncurses5-dev but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: libreadline-dev
>>                Depends: libjpeg-dev
>>                Depends: libpcre3-dev but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: libpng12-dev but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed
>>                Depends: libbz2-dev but it is not going to be installed
>>
>> Now the funny thing is that if I do
>> which gfortran
>> it tells me I have gfortran on my path.
>>
>> Before I move on to Plan B which is to download the sources and compile them myself would
>> anyone like to advise me what is going wrong and whether this will mean that Plan B is
>> doomed to fail before I start.
>>
>> Plan C is to run one of the Debian or Ubuntu tailored EEE PC versions off a USB stuck but
>> I find the documentation for doing that hard to grasp.
>>
>> You might find it helpful to know that more or less all I know of Linux is gained from
>> reading this list and that I am still at the stage where I regard setting up a symbolic
>> link as a major achievement.
>>
>>
>> Michael Dewey
>> info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
>> http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk/home.html
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> R-SIG-Debian mailing list
>> R-SIG-Debian at r-project.org
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:52:42 -0800
> From: "Kingsley G. Morse Jr."<kingsley at loaner.com>
> To: John C Nash<nashjc at uottawa.ca>
> Cc: r-sig-debian at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-Debian] Upgrading R on my EEE PC netbook
> Message-ID:<20111130205242.GB7946 at loaner.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On 11/30/11 10:51, John C Nash wrote:
>> [...]
>> CrunchBang linux, which is a debian squeeze
>> variant. I can use the R debian packages.
> Nice!
>
> ~K
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Debian mailing list
> R-SIG-Debian at r-project.org
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
>
>
> End of R-SIG-Debian Digest, Vol 76, Issue 1
> *******************************************

-- 
Mike Cheetham

Graduate Student
University of Southern California
Department of Earth Sciences
http://earth.usc.edu/~cheetham/

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