[R-sig-Debian] SOLVED- Re: help installing R on Linux Mint 21.2

[Facundo Muñoz]

Hi Luben,

For what is worth, I've been a RStudio-on-Mint user for many years now 
and never had major problems. You just need to proceed as if you were 
using the upstream Ubuntu version corresponding to your Mint version. E.g. :

cat /etc/upstream-release/lsb-release

I agree with Dirk in that it would be best if Posit supported an apt repo.

Otherwise, downloading the .deb and opening it up with the system's 
default installer 'just works', as you find out.

For a more programmatic approach to install from the terminal or from a 
script, you can do something along the lines of:

# RStudio (latest version)
wget http://www.rstudio.org/download/desktop
rsversion=`grep -Eo -m1 
'[[:digit:]]{4}\\.[[:digit:]]{2}\\.[[:digit:]]+-[[:digit:]]+' desktop`
rm desktop
case $arch in
     i386)
         rsarch=$arch;;
     *)
         rsarch='amd64'
esac


rsfname=rstudio-$rsversion-$rsarch.deb
wget https://download1.rstudio.org/desktop/$ubuntu_codename/$rsarch/$rsfname
sudo gdebi -n $rsfname
rm $rsfname

This is taken from a longer bash script of mine [1] that installs and 
configures about everything I need for work, including R and RStudio, 
but also VSCode and other things.

The variable $arch is from a time were I used computers with different 
architectures (32/64 bits). I guess I could get rid of it nowadays.

Also, the very rudimentary scraping part in the beginning that tries to 
find out the name of the file to be downloaded from Posit's web is 
fragile, and it fails whenever they change the file-naming pattern or 
path structure. It might need to be adapted if necessary. It worked a 
few months ago when I last used it.


Hope it helps.

ƒacu.-


[1] https://github.com/famuvie/setup-linux/blob/master/main.sh

On 02/01/2024 05:16, Luben Dimov wrote:
> Dirk,
>
> Tank you for your response this late in the day. I had Debian, but
> couldn't get it to work on my new work computer (and can't get Linux
> help from our IT), hence Linux Mint now.
>
> Because of the issues you mentioned  with Posit, and others, I have
> been thinking about using Emacs instead of RStudio for R. I have not
> ever used Emacs before, but because I am not yet a proficient user of R
> and R Studio, I wonder if my time is better spent learning how to use R
> on Emacs instead of on R Studio. I wonder what your thoughts are on
> that.
>
> Thanks again!
> Luben
>
>
> On Mon, 2024-01-01 at 22:06 -0600, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>> Luben,
>>
>> I am glad to hear you sorted it out.  As far as I can tell there are
>> two or
>> three issues here:
>>
>> - you are on Mint which is not 'officially' support by posit
>> (Debian/Ubuntu are)
>>
>> - the installation instructions have said for a decade+ to download
>> the .deb
>>    and then install it with gdebi (iirc) which pulls dependencies in
>>
>> - that still sucks: it is 2023 and it is time we shame posit into
>> support and
>>    apt repo: some of us have built informal apt repos, this is the way
>> go.  I
>>    also get chrome, spotify, brave, code, dropbox, docker, syncthing,
>> .... that
>>    way, there is no reason whatsoever posit could not support that
>> either.
>>
>> Cheers, Dirk
>>
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