Sander Oom wrote:
Hi Charles,
Warm felt sympathies for your struggles. I consider myself a happy GUI
user and have also struggled with the 'command line' history and lack of
out-of-the-box functionality associated with Linux. However, Linux does
have many, many advantages over other OS's, so I will stick to it. That
said, I am reluctantly suggesting it to others, as there are lots of
other things one can do on a Saturday afternoon. ;-)
After many long afternoons, I have come to the conclusion that accepting
what comes as standard is the best approach to using Linux if you do
have better things to do. I tried ESS, but I found it impenetrable at my
first try, so gave up.
I run SuSE linux and R without any problem. The RPM was downloaded from
CRAN and installed without any errors. I run update.packages to
download, install and refresh all contributed and other packages.
I also looked for an R GUI, but must admit I stopped way before you did.
I ended up using my favorite editor (Kate, comes standard with KDE) and
cut and paste code into an R console (available as standard in the Kate
window). Gives a nice clean window for writing code and running R. Of
course Kate has code highlighting facilities (as standard). I soon
realized that the console has a limited buffer for commands, such that
long code sequences are abruptly ended part way through. Thus I have a
second console open from which I source whole R files. The setup gives a
relatively comfortable code debugging environment!
I was amazed when I read the instruction for JGR on Linux. I thought the
whole point of Java was to create platform independent software. I have
given up on any instructions that tell me to run 'make'. Linux
distributions are just to idiosyncratic for it to be worth the effort.
I'll just wait until Novell packs JGR with the new version of SuSE
Linux. Even if I have to pay something for the added bonus!
Will keep following the GUI developments with interest,
Sander.
White, Charles E WRAIR-Wash DC wrote:
I feel your pain. <grin> I am a new Linux user who has spent most of
the weekend trying to get a functional R setup. When I installed
Fedora Core 3 (FC3) on my home computer, I thought using R in a
terminal would be a snap. I installed R using the rpm packages and
tried to use it with the FC3 default terminal (GNOME Terminal 2.7.3).
Before long, I found out the terminal was rudely discarding output
beyond a set number of lines. I could increase the number of lines
kept by the terminal but that didn't strike me as an acceptable
solution. Cutting to my stress relieving intermediate solution, I am
currently using xemacs with ESS as my R programming environment under
FC3. Eventually, I will want to run JGR as my programming environment
and Rcmdr as both a teaching tool and means to distribute code to some
of my clients. On my way to xemacs, I also tried to install emacs and
gnomeGUI. I will briefly document my experience with trying to install
each of these packages below:
XEMACS with ESS: XEMACS is within the 'walled garden' of packages
tuned specifically to run under FC3 and XEMACS provides a tuned
installation for ESS. Since I had already compiled R from source with
shared libraries enabled (the rmp does not enable shared libraries), I
don't know if XEMACS will work with the rpm version of R. Note also
that I installed this package using yum; 'Add or Remove Applications'
lists xemacs but wouldn't allow me to install.
JGR: I have installed jdk1.5.0_03 and MOST of the the output from make
looks like JGR is compiling correctly. JavaGD and rJava are not
finding jini.h. I don't see an explicit statement of how to start JGR
but I assume that is done by typing JGR (or maybe jgr) in a terminal
window. Nothing happens. Two potential problems are: (a) I never
should have downloaded JavaGD and rJava from CRAN (they won't
uninstall, deleting the directories doesn't stop the problem, and I
can't use yum to remove R to start over because yum doesn't recognise
that R is installed.) or (b) I need to uninstall some of the stray
versions of java littering my hard drive. I haven't removed the
symbolic link between jre1.5.0_02 and firefox.
Rcmdr: There are all sorts of things in FC3 that seem to be tcl/tk
related but Rcmdr doesn't seem to work with them. Since some are part
of the base FC3 installation, I'm nervious about replacing them or
installing competing software. Potentially conflicting software in FC3
are listed below:
tcl.i386 8.4.7-2 installed
tclx.i386 8.3.5-4 installed
db4-tcl.i386 4.2.52-6 base
postgresql-tcl.i386 7.4.8-1.FC3.1
updates-released
ruby-tcltk.i386 1.8.2-1.FC3.1
updates-released
tcl-devel.i386 8.4.7-2 base
tcl-html.i386 8.4.7-2 base
tclx-devel.i386 8.3.5-4 base
tclx-doc.i386 8.3.5-4 base
EMACS with ESS: A version of EMACS is tuned to FC3 but ESS has to be
obtained elsewhere. Installing ESS requires editing the hidden .emacs
file. I know how to see hidden files but this one does not appear to
be where the ESS directions say to look.
gnomeGUI: Error message says that I don't have Gnome installed. It
would be nice and GNU to have a working copy of gnome GUI.
I hope you have found my message to be entertaining. If anybody can
stop me before I do something else stupid, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
Chuck
Charles E. White, Senior Biostatistician, MS
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
503 Robert Grant Ave., Room 1w102
Silver Spring, MD 20910-1557
Personal/Professional Site:
http://users.starpower.net/cwhite571/professional/
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Hi Charles,
I'm pretty much inline with Chuck. I use Nedit for the last 2/3 years to
edit R files and source them into R and I'm pretty much convinced that
it is the best way to use R.
ESS looks very good but why should I load more than 30MB on the memory
to work on a text file ? and why do I need to lear all the tricks and
features of emacs just to edit a text file ?
JGR looks very good but it does not really give anything new, once
you're used with the command line.
Regards
EJ
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