[R] switching to Linux, suggestions?

[Siegfried Gonzi]

doktora v wrote:

>I'm using SUSE with success on intel laptop and AMD desktop. You get
>the best of both worlds: rpm and source. I can easily get the rpm
>packages i need, and compile on my own the things that i can spend
>time on (such as R 2.0.1 -- compiles out of the box on suse).
>
>BTW, I'm looking to switch to Mac platform. Anyone had any experience
>with that? I'm expecting on a power G4 laptop later this week.... hope
>R behaves...
>

Hello:

There is one issue about SuSE Linux: The "Professional version" and the 
"Standard distribution". The professional version cost a tad more.

The advantage of the professional version: you get always the header 
files too in some cases. I once had SuSE Linux 8 on my old Celeron 
laptop. At that time I tried to install "Numerics" on Python. But with 
no avail because the "Standard SuSE distribution" lacks some additional 
header files and you get always the bare minimum only.

That said: the normal SuSE distribution will always let you aft-install 
all the things you need.

Regards,
S. Gonzi
PS: I hope I am not saying somthing outragiuous wrong now: but there 
exists a free Fortran 95 compiler from INTEL for Linux. As far as I know 
it is the one and only free Fortran 95 compiler out there (okay gnu g95 
is on its way). However, it is hard to get INTEL Fortran 95 running on 
Debian Linux a colleague told me. I for myslef can only say that I had 
had no problems in installing Fortran 95 from INTEL on SuSE.