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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--
--------------------------------------------
Dr Sander P. Oom
Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences,
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa
Tel (work) +27 (0)11 717 64 04
Tel (home) +27 (0)18 297 44 51
Fax +27 (0)18 299 24 64
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web www.oomvanlieshout.net/sander
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