R in a Nutshell

Getting and Installing Interactive R Binaries

R has been ported to every major desktop computing platform. Because R is open source, developers have ported R to many different platforms. Additionally, R is available with no license fee.

If you’re using a Mac or Windows machine, you’ll probably want to download the files yourself and then run the installers. (If you’re using Linux, I recommend using a port management system like Yum to simplify the installation and updating process; see Linux and Unix Systems.) Here’s how to find the binaries.

1. Visit the official R website. On the site, you should see a link to “Download.”

2. The download link actually takes you to a list of mirror sites. The list is organized by country. You’ll probably want to pick a site that is geographically close, because it’s likely to also be close on the Internet, and thus fast. I usually use the link for the University of California, Los Angeles, because I live in California.

3. Find the right binary for your platform and run the installer.

There are a few things to keep in mind, depending on what system you’re using.

Building R from Source

It’s standard practice to build R from source on Linux and Unix systems, but not on Mac OS X or Windows platforms. It’s pretty tricky to build your own binaries on Mac OS X or Windows, and it doesn’t yield a lot of benefits for most users. Building R from source won’t save you space (you’ll probably have to download a lot of other stuff, like LaTeX), and it won’t save you time (unless ...