[R-sig-Geo] There is a better distribution of linux to get the best performance of R, GRASS.. etc?

[Johan Van de Wauw]

> On Fri, 2010-09-17 at 13:43 +0200, Virgilio Gomez Rubio wrote:
>> Dear Jaime,
>>
>> In addition to all options pointed out, you may want to try Quantian:
>>
>> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
I would not recommend such an ancient distribution - newer hardware
may not work well, the version of all software is *old*

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 2:33 PM, stefano <stefano at casalegno.net> wrote:

> You can try the  http://gisvm.com/ Ubuntu virtual machine that includes
> GRASS R Qgis SAGA and many other interesting tools.
>
> You can also try the virtual machine from the www.spatial-ecology.net
> that is very similar. The spatial-ecology wiki provide many examples and
> tutorials for beginners willing to learn GIS and spatial analysis using
> OS softwares under GUI and under a command line interface. Just register
> and explore it.
Third option, which in my humble and biased opinion (largest developer
base, documentation efforts) the best live dvd for open source gis:
http://live.osgeo.org/
Especially if you create a usb disk, install or run in virtualbox
(running from dvd is very slow) a nice option.

Anyway, to boil down to your original question: all distributions will
do - and they are very similar. In your case I would nevertheless
recommend ubuntu because ubuntugis ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS
) has some repositories with up to date versions of many gis packages,
which makes it much easier to install things - there will be enough
other things to learn if you switch from windows.

Johan