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2007-12-16
I recently decided to install R, a free open source software package for performing statistical analyses. I'm still pretty new with Linux, so I didn't realize what all was involved. I figured it would be like any other program you want to install in Windows: download the install package and double-click it. Not so with this. As this helpful page explains, you first have to modify your "sources.list" file and add the site from which you will download the R files. But to do that, you have to go to a terminal window and enter a "sudo" command to get permission to modify the "sources.list" file. After you do that, you then run the "apt-get update" command and then run a command to install R. Oh, but I forgot -- before you can do that, you have to type a couple lines for security key access. So if you do all that, the install goes as planned, right? Well, no, not if you don't have certain dependencies installed. What I lacked was "libgfortran0". No problem. I'll go to the Ubuntu package manager and get it. But wait, it wasn't there. After about an hour of googling and Ubuntu forum searches, I finally found it here. As irony would have it, I simply had to download "libgfortran0" to my desktop and double-click on it to install it. Then I could run the install commands from the terminal to install R. Usually installing a new program in Ubuntu is super simple. But this time around, wow, what an ordeal. Hopefully learning R won't be nearly as frustrating.
8:55 PM
 
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