Statistical Package (like Minitab) for Linux

Marc Schwartz MSchwartz at MedAnalytics.com
Tue Mar 2 20:32:44 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 14:11, Globe Trotter wrote:
> The best package of all (both in terms of features as well as cost), R, is
> available for free, at www.r-project.org. Try it out: however, if you are
> looking for a GUI-based package, you will be disappointed.
> 
> R is similar to Splus which is available to purchase from www.insightful.com --
> however, it is far ahead and pretty much better in all respects, in my
> considered opinion. I have both products and hardly use Splus anymore. 
> 
> On another note, I wonder why this is not included in Fedora. SuSE includes it,
> perhaps because they are European.

It's not a European vs U.S. issue.

I have had prior discussions with Martyn Plummer, the RH/Fedora
maintainer for R in the past (back during the FC1 Betas) regarding the
possibility of submitting R for inclusion the in the Fedora Extras
group.

We have also discussed the possibility of creating a R "up2date/yum"
compatible repository for FC on CRAN.

I am unaware at this time where Martyn is leaning. Part of the issue is
the large number of "add-on" packages for R, that are not only on CRAN,
but on BioConductor and other R related repositories. Trying to
standardize the various components across multiple locations and for
multiple versions of RH/FC is a substantial undertaking at this point.

Another consideration is that there has not been a pattern of making
incremental patch releases of R available in a binary fashion. The
source code is of course available and I usually update a couple of
times per week via rsync. The typical pattern is for twice per year
binary S/RPM updates with a 1.x.0 and 1.x.1 version pattern. R 1.9.0
will be released this Spring.

R itself is evolving a repository like installation/updating function
and there have been a variety of efforts amongst the Debian R users to
coordinate and standardize the management of "base" R packages and
add-ons. This has not been an easy task on their part, having been part
of some of the exchanges.

That all being said, I would defer to Martyn near term as to what his
thoughts are at this point. I will drop him an e-mail to get some
updates.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz






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