[R] help on determining operating system

[Don MacQueen]

R works very well with the Mac operating system, in my experience.

Packages with simple C should be easy; I have several packages of my 
own that use Fortran, just one or two subroutines each, and I have no 
difficulty building them.

I'm no expert, but as I understand it, Apple has done some things on 
the unix side that are somewhat different than what you'll see on a 
typical Linux; if you try to work with what Apple has done, in the 
way that Apple has designed it to be used, you will have a lot to 
learn. But I've done just fine without it for my rather simple needs.

In my opinion, if you want to use mainstream desktop applications 
like Microsoft Office and also work in a unix-like environment, on 
the same computer, OS X is the way to go. You can run R in 
command-line mode at a unix prompt, as on Linux, or using the console 
app, similar to how it's done on Windows.

-Don

At 9:40 PM -0700 12/11/06, LU  YING wrote:
>Dear list,
>
>I am an R user and I also write my own package in R(sometime i need to
>write  in C), and right now i am thinking about buying a new
>workstation--and i am trying to decide if i should get
>a mac with OS X or a linux machine (for example Dell).
>
>I have experience using R on linux (but i have been just a user and never
>been a admin) but i am hesitating of managing a linux system on my own
>(btw I would like to have my new workstation to be used as a server), so
>right now I am leaning toward of buying a Mac Pro. But from the website,
>it sounds like R doesnt work quite well with Mac operating system
>yet...so I was wondering if anybody here have any experiences of
>using/developing R package on a Mac machine? Is it smooth enough?
>
>(oh by the way, i am not a Mac user yet, Windows has been the primary
>operating system that i used, but after hearing many good things
>of OS X, I am really interested in switching over.)
>
>any suggestions are appreciated!
>
>Ying
>
>
>Ying Lu
>Assistant Professor
>Dept. Sociology
>U-Colorado at Boulder
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.


-- 
---------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA