Togaware: Rattle: Installation on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Rattle: Installation on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Installing Rattle

A local install on your own computer for a quick start with Rattle can be undertaken with the operating system specific instructions below. We do however recommend running Rattle on Ubuntu 23.04 which you can do using Parallels on MacOS or using WSL2 from the Microsoft Store on Windows 11.

Note that RGtk2, the GUI Toolkit utilised by Rattle, has been archived on CRAN. Below we utilise the archived version to support Rattle.

On Ubuntu 23.10 R 4.3.1 Rattle 5.5.2 (Tested 2 April 2024):

Last updated: 20240402

Also tested on Ubunutu 23.04 and R 4.2.2 (30 April 2023) and a cloud instance of Ubuntu 22.04 on Linode with R 4.1.2 (Tested 2 April 2024).

This approach installs a pre-built RGtk2 package. Replace the 4.3 on two lines in the below script with the version of R you are running (e.g., 4.1 or 4.2):

$ sudo apt-get install r-recommended r-cran-xml libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev
$ wget https://access.togaware.com/RGtk2_2.20.36.2_prebuilt_linux.zip
$ mkdir -p ~/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.3/
$ unzip RGtk2_2.20.36.2_prebuilt_linux.zip -d ~/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.3/
$ R
> install.packages("rattle")                # This will install dependencies.
> install.packages("rattle", repos="https://rattle.togaware.com", type="source")
> library(rattle)
> rattle()

The following approach has often worked, compiling RGtk2 from source, but is dependenent on other OS and R settings that are currently not clear. Give it a go (it won't harm anything).

$ sudo apt-get install r-recommended r-cran-xml libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev
$ R
> install.packages("https://access.togaware.com/RGtk2_2.20.36.2.tar.gz", repos=NULL)
> install.packages("rattle")                # This will install dependencies.
> install.packages("rattle", repos="https://rattle.togaware.com", type="source")
> library(rattle)
> rattle()

Rattle is the R Analytical Tool To Learn Easily, a GUI based application written in R. Installation is straightforward on different platforms. The Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux is a polished, easy to install, freely available, widely used, platform on which to run Rattle, and is one of the most popular virtual machine operating systems in the cloud. The latest version is 23.04 and has been tested to work with Rattle 5.5.2 on R 4.2.2.

Ubuntu is recommended to the Data Scientist as the platform for analyzing data. It can be installed on most computers, new and old, as well as on specific tablets and smartphones. It can replace your current operating system (Windows or OSX) or else it can be installed within a VirtualBox on any platform, all for free. If installing within a VirtualBox then enable the VirtualBox guest additions and bidirectional cut/paste. It is also available from the Microsoft store's WSL and under Parallels on the Mac.

Installing Out of the Box

Last updated: 20240402

See the Rattle home page for the latest instructions to install Rattle on a Ubuntu linux desktop. Below are alternatives only if the default does not work.

Setting up a Cloud Server Running Rattle

Last updated: 20240402

The latest version of R presents challenges in running Rattle due to the demise of the essential RGtk2 package upon which Rattle depends. A demostrably usable work around is to set up a Ubuntu 22.04 server (e.g., on Linode, Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud) to which all users can connect using X2Go from their own desktops.

After creating the Ubuntu (22.04, 23.03, 23.10) server we can set up R 4.1.2 to support RGtk2 20.36.2 and Rattle 5.5.2 for all users:

$ sudo apt-get install r-recommended r-cran-xml libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev
$ wget https://access.togaware.com/RGtk2_2.20.36.2_prebuilt_linux.zip
$ unzip RGtk2_2.20.36.2_prebuilt_linux.zip
$ rsync -avzh RGtk2/ /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/RGtk2/
$ sudo R
> install.packages("rattle")                # This will install dependencies.
> install.packages("rattle", repos="https://rattle.togaware.com", type="source")

We can also try a source install but it is currently failing on Ubuntu:

$ R
> install.packages("https://access.togaware.com/RGtk2_2.20.36.2.tar.gz", repos=NULL)
$ sudo rsync -avzh R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.1/RGtk2/ /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/RGtk2/

The non-root install of RGtk2, if it succeeds is copied across to the R site library for all users to access. However, the compilation on Ubuntu 23.10 raises errors in the RGtk code and earlier attempts failed due to an indexing issue when trying to install the compiled RGtk2.

I got the prebuilt version after accidentally installing the Windows zip, which create the right folder but of course failed to load in R on Linux. I then tried a source install and it did compile?

Getting the Latest R - For the Experienced

After installing Ubuntu on your computer, install the wajig package manager.

$ sudo apt-get install wajig

From the command line or through the Software Centre GUI:

$ wajig addrepo ppa:marutter/rrutter4.0
$ wajig addrepo ppa:c2d4u.team/c2d4u4.0+
$ wajig distupgrade
$ wajig install libgtk2.0-dev r-base-dev r-cran-rattle

We can then run Rattle:

$ R
> library(rattle)
> rattle()

To update to the latest development version of Rattle:

 > install.packages("rattle", repos="http://rattle.togaware.com")

Rattle will use R's install.packages to install missing packages as it comes across the need for them. They get installed into the local library (/usr/local/lib/R/site-library) if you have write access there, or else into the user's library (~/R). The repository packages install into the sytem library (/usr/lib/R/site-library). The user's libraries override the local libraries override the system libraries. Thus packages installed locally using install.packages will override packages installed using wajig. This can be a source of confusion, when we think we have installed a later version than R is loading. Use remove.packages to remove the local R installed packages.

The following will install the other R packages that Rattle uses:

 $ wajig install -y \
      r-bioc-biocgenerics \
      r-bioc-graph \
      r-bioc-rbgl \
      r-cran-amap \
      r-cran-amelia \
      r-cran-animation \
      r-cran-arules \
      r-cran-base64enc \
      r-cran-biocmanager \
      r-cran-c50 \
      r-cran-car \
      r-cran-caret \
      r-cran-cba \
      r-cran-cellranger \
      r-cran-clipr \
      r-cran-cluster \
      r-cran-clv \
      r-cran-colorramps \
      r-cran-colorspace \
      r-cran-colourpicker \
      r-cran-corrplot \
      r-cran-curl \
      r-cran-dbi \
      r-cran-dbplyr \
      r-cran-deoptimr \
      r-cran-devtools \
      r-cran-diagram \
      r-cran-doby \
      r-cran-dplyr \
      r-cran-dt \
      r-cran-e1071 \
      r-cran-effects \
      r-cran-epitools \
      r-cran-extrafont \
      r-cran-fbasics \
      r-cran-fields \
      r-cran-flexmix \
      r-cran-forcats \
      r-cran-foreign \
      r-cran-fpc \
      r-cran-fs \
      r-cran-futile.logger \
      r-cran-futile.options \
      r-cran-gam \
      r-cran-gclus \
      r-cran-ggally \
      r-cran-ggdendro \
      r-cran-ggplot2 \
      r-cran-ggthemes \
      r-cran-gplots \
      r-cran-gridextra \
      r-cran-haven \
      r-cran-hexbin \
      r-cran-hmisc \
      r-cran-htmlwidgets \
      r-cran-httr \
      r-cran-igraph \
      r-cran-iplots \
      r-cran-jsonlite \
      r-cran-kernlab \
      r-cran-knitr \
      r-cran-lambda.r \
      r-cran-lattice \
      r-cran-latticeextra \
      r-cran-lme4 \
      r-cran-lubridate \
      r-cran-magrittr \
      r-cran-matrix \
      r-cran-mclust \
      r-cran-mice \
      r-cran-minqa \
      r-cran-modelr \
      r-cran-modelr \
      r-cran-nloptr \
      r-cran-nnet \
      r-cran-openssl \
      r-cran-openxlsx \
      r-cran-party \
      r-cran-partykit \
      r-cran-pbkrtest \
      r-cran-plotly \
      r-cran-plyr \
      r-cran-plyr \
      r-cran-pmml \
      r-cran-png \
      r-cran-proc \
      r-cran-purrr \
      r-cran-qap \
      r-cran-r6 \
      r-cran-randomforest \
      r-cran-rattle \
      r-cran-rcolorbrewer \
      r-cran-rcppeigen \
      r-cran-rcurl \
      r-cran-readr \
      r-cran-readxl \
      r-cran-registry \
      r-cran-rematch \
      r-cran-reprex \
      r-cran-reshape2 \
      r-cran-rggobi \
      r-cran-rmarkdown \
      r-cran-robustbase \
      r-cran-rocr \
      r-cran-rodbc \
      r-cran-rpart \
      r-cran-rpart.plot \
      r-cran-rvest \
      r-cran-scatterplot3d \
      r-cran-seriation \
      r-cran-shinybs \
      r-cran-statmod \
      r-cran-tidyr \
      r-cran-tm \
      r-cran-tsp \
      r-cran-vcd \
      r-cran-viridis \
      r-cran-waveslim \
      r-cran-whisker \
      r-cran-wordcloud \
      r-cran-xml \
      r-cran-xtable

The following don't have Ubuntu packages:

$ R
> install.packages(c("glue"
                  ,"FSelector"
	          ,"ada"
		  ,"arulesViz"
		  ,"ckanr"
		  ,"descr"
		  ,"hmeasure"
		  ,"verification"
		  ,"wskm"
		  ,"xkcd"
		  ),
                repos='https://cloud.r-project.org')

For trouble shooting see Rattle Install Trouble Shooting.

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