[R] Ubuntu, Revolutions, R

[David M Smith]

Andrew is correct: the upcoming release of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) will
feature the REvolution R distribution. (I am a REvolution Computing
employee.) Our developers have been working with Canonical's
representatives over the past several months to upgrade R in Ubuntu to
2.9.2 and to include the REvolution R extensions.

> My question(s) for the community is this (pick any question(s) you like to
> answer:
>        Should I install the REvolution Computing packages?
>        Do these packages really make R faster?
>        Are these packages stable?
>        What are your experiences with REvolution Computing software?

Whether you install the REvolution Computing packages is up to you.
When you upgrade to KK, the only change made to stock R is the
.Rprofile.site file, adding the message about how to install the
extensions. (You can edit the .Rprofile.site file if you prefer.)

If you do install the extensions, no changes are made to the core R
language (it is 100% compatible with stock R). R will be linked to
multi-threaded math libraries, which will improve performance for some
mathematical operations (particularly on a multi-core system, where
more than 1 processor will be used). So you should expect it to make R
faster.

Installing the extensions also installs some additional packages from
REvolution Computing, including foreach and iterators, and Simon
Urbanek's multicore package from CRAN. The REvolution packages have
been in use for over a year, and are very stable. In any case they are
not attached by default. But if you do load these packages, you can
use the "foreach" function to parallelize loops, making R run faster
on multicore systems.

I'll leave others to speak of their experiences of REvolution
Computing software (our contributions to the community include the
packages nws, foreach, iterators, doSNOW and doMC and REvolution R
itself). But from my personal perspective, I'm proud to have been able
to extend awareness and use of R to new domains, and to improve the
performance of R for many users.

# David Smith
Director of Community, REvolution Computing

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:40 PM, Andrew Choens <andy.choens at gmail.com> wrote:
> For those who don't follow Ubuntu development carefully, the first Beta for the
> next Ubuntu was recently released, so I took my home system and upgraded to
> help out with filing bugs, etc.
>
> Just to be clear, I am not looking for help with the upgrade process. I've had
> R, and a few miscellaneous CRAN packages installed on this computer for years.
> Today, when I loaded an R session I had developed before the upgrade, I saw
> something new in my R "welcome message".
>>
>>R version 2.9.2 (2009-08-24)
>>Copyright (C) 2009 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
>>ISBN 3-900051-07-0
>>
>>R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
>>You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
>>Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.
>>
>>R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
>>Type 'contributors()' for more information and
>>'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.
>>
>>
>>This is REvolution R version 3.0.0:
>>the optimized distribution of R from REvolution Computing.
>>REvolution R enhancements Copyright (C) REvolution Computing, Inc.
>>
>>Checking for REvolution MKL:
>  >- REvolution R enhancements not installed.
>>For improved performance and other extensions: apt-get install revolution-r
>
> The last part, about this being the "enhanced" version of R was . . .
> unexpected.  I have heard of this company before and now I've spent some time
> on their website. Looking at my installation, Ubuntu did not install any of
> the REvolution Computing components, although R now basically thows a warning
> every time I start it.
>
> My question(s) for the community is this (pick any question(s) you like to
> answer:
>        Should I install the REvolution Computing packages?
>        Do these packages really make R faster?
>        Are these packages stable?
>        What are your experiences with REvolution Computing software?
>
> I am interested in hearing from members of the community, REvolution Computing
> employees/supporters (although please ID yourself as such) and most anyone
> else. I can see what they say on their website, but I'm interested in getting
> other opinions too.
>
> Thanks!

-- 
David M Smith <david at revolution-computing.com>
Director of Community, REvolution Computing www.revolution-computing.com
Tel: +1 (206) 577-4778 x3203 (San Francisco, USA)

Check out our upcoming events schedule at www.revolution-computing.com/events