Rattle: Installation on GNU/Linux

Overview

Install R using your distribution's package manager (software market)
Startup R and then

Notes

Under Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat and Suse both 32bit and 64bit variants are supported.

Below we illustrate the installation on Ubuntu. See CRAN for details.

A common issue is the need to install the GTK development packages so that R can compile the required packages. On Ubuntu or Debian do this first:

$ sudo apt-get install wajig
$ wajig install libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev

Details

1. Install Latest R

We first add the appropriate CRAN repository to the Ubuntu list of repositories. From the command line (and we can also do this through the Software Centre GUI):

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list natty

deb http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu natty/

The archive is signed to ensure its integrity. We add the signature to our system:

$ gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
$ gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

We can then install the r-recommended and r-base-dev package, which will also pull in a number of other packages.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install r-recommended r-base-dev

We install the dev version so we can install other packages from source.

This will install r-base-core_2.14.1-1oneiric0_amd64.deb [120118].

2. Install Rattle

We now install Rattle using R's package manager to do so. Open up a Terminal (from the Accessories menu under Applications) and start up R.

$ R

Then install the Rattle package:

> install.packages("rattle")

We can then run Rattle:

> library(rattle)
> rattle()

3. Optional Configuration and Installations

A launcher for Rattle can be set up using the command line:
```
sh -c 'R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES="rattle" R "$@"'
```
If this is being set up as a gnome launcher, be sure to start it up as an application in a terminal.
Above we added an entry into /etc/apt/sources.list for Ubuntu version 11.10, also known as Oneiric [120202]. Change the cran.r-project.org to point to a closer mirror of the archive. The mirrors are listeod in http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html. Also, change oneiric to one of hardy, lucid, maverick or natty [120202] to match you installation of Ubuntu. For a Debian install, add
```
deb http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian squeeze-cran/
```
You may like to install RStudio (version 0.93.76 is 23MB), a comprehensive development environment for interacting with R, from www.rstudio.org as rstudio-0.93.76-amd64.deb [110317].

An alternative to RStudio is Emacs Speaks S. Simply install the appropriate Debian packages:
```
$ sudo apt-get install ess
```

We can force the install of other packages Rattle uses. Without doing this, Rattle will notice these packages missing when we try to use some functionality dependent on the package. In this case Rattle will offer to install them. If we prefer, we can install all dependent packages now, if, for example, we may not always be connected to the Internet. We might need to restart R to be able to reinstall Rattle in this way (if it is already loaded into the running R session).
```
> install.packages("rattle", dep=c("Suggests"))
```

For trouble shooting see Rattle Install Trouble Shooting.