how can i install R (the statistical package)

[akniss]

the thing is, I was interested in R when I was writing my thesis. then I found out that I cannot use it until I get an R course... at the university I mean.

So I got stuck with spss and vmware while writing the thesis... wasn't happy...

R has so much potential. It has so much potential that you can't grasp it (letalone learn it) quickly without a nice GUI that will allow you to "play around". A nice gui with understandable menus, sensible buttons, and a "my user is stupid" attitude

without such a stupid[me]-oriented gui, it seems to me that only the R-book-readers and R-class-takers will be able to use it, not those who have to "write it now and learn it later".

ps. cmdr is very nice when compared to tk. but, weirdly, it blocks its developers from writing a gui for R, because they keep saying "hey we have a gui".

Maybe its just me, but I find Rcmdr more confusing than the cli R interface...

[pstep9407]

Come to think of it, you're right. What I like about the OS X interface for R is not the buttons or drop-downs but the layout -- script on the right, interpreter on the left. That said, I'm working on a script, and I have a question about installing R packages on Linux. How is it done? I downloaded a package called maptools, and it's in my /tmp dir, but how to proceed from there? Any help at all would be appreciated. Tx,
Phil

[akniss]

Come to think of it, you're right. What I like about the OS X interface for R is not the buttons or drop-downs but the layout -- script on the right, interpreter on the left. That said, I'm working on a script, and I have a question about installing R packages on Linux. How is it done? I downloaded a package called maptools, and it's in my /tmp dir, but how to proceed from there? Any help at all would be appreciated. Tx,
Phil

assuming the downloaded package is called maptools.tar.gz, and is in your /tmp directory, at a terminal, type

sudo R CMD INSTALL /tmp/maptools.tar.gz

That should take care of it.