[R-sig-Fedora] Scientific Linux

[(Ted Harding)]

Greetings!

I have just signed up to r-sig-fedora because I have
installed Scientific Linux 6.2 (my first Red Hat based
Linux since over 10 years ago ... ). I'm trying this for
basically 2 reasons: first, I expect CERN and FermiLab
should do a good job of maintaining their distribution,
and in particular to take care of its compatibility with
scientific software; second, because it still has Gnome 2 ...

I installed it off the Live DVD from the Scientific Linux
website, and this went very smoothly. However, it does not
of course come in the first instance with any special
scientific software (in in particular not with R).

For extra packages it has been suggested to me to use EPEL
(Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux, not specifically for
Scientific Linux). And there are the CRAN repositories, of
course.

I am now wondering -- and somewhat puzzled -- as to how best
to move forward. At some stage in exploring my installation
(and I cannot now recall how I got there) an information
panel came up which said that it was not possible to add
further package sources to the list of software sources!

So, for instance, it would seem not to be possible to
add a CRAN mirror.

So it looks as though one may be stuck with downloading
what one wants, package by package, and installing it by
hand (and not getting automatic updates etc.)

Any comments, please? Red Hat has changed a lot since I
last installed it (RH 7.1 in 2001; I have more recently
been installing Debian), and I'm not familiar with the
current way of running things (and, in particular, with
the intermingling of Gnome and KDE things).

With thanks,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at wlandres.net>
Date: 30-Jun-2012  Time: 19:25:13
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