R Programming Language – A Statistical Computing and Graphics Tool

The R programming language is a free and open-source scripting language specialized for statistical computing and graphics. Statisticians and data miners use the R language for developing statistical software and data analysis. This widely used software is supported by the R Foundation for statistical computing. It’s a cross-platform programming language that compiles and runs on Unix/Linux platform, Windows, and macOS.

It helps users with more than 4000 specialized packages. That makes it one of the best statistical software packages among statisticians and researchers. While using R programming, the developer enjoys full freedom and power. They can do three unique elements in one single tool – Data Manipulation, Data Analysis, and Data Visualization.

Like S programming language, R programming is also a GNU project. Hence, we can consider the R language as an alternative implementation of the S language. R uses a command-line interface to let the user interact with the system, hence provides an open-source route. R produces the best publication quality post, and all became possible only for being free and open-source in nature.

This programming language includes functions that support classical statistics, clustering, linear modeling, non-linear modeling, classifications, and much more. It also provides a broad, well-integrated, and coherent set of tools for Data Analysis and Visualization.

Install R Programming Language

This programming language is fast-moving cutting-edge technology. The latest stable version is not always available in distro-specific or Ubuntu’s repositories. Here in this quick tutorial, we will be using an external repository maintained by the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For installing it on Ubuntu, you should have a minimum of 1 GB of RAM and a non-root user with sudo privileges.

Now at first, you have to add the relevant GPG key. Open the Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9

Now add the R programming language repository in the Ubuntu system:

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/'

Now, update and install:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install r-base

Or else you can download the source code for installing it in any Linux distribution.

Download R Programming Language Source Code

Install RStudio IDE Desktop

After installing the “R”, you might be interested in installing the open-source RStudio IDE. It’s an integrated development environment – IDE interface to a version of the R programming language running on a remote Linux server.

At this stage, you can download RStudio from the official page or else run the below command into the Terminal:

wget https://download1.rstudio.org/rstudio-xenial-1.1.414-amd64.deb

Now install the package:

sudo dpkg -i rstudio-xenial-1.1.414-amd64.deb

If you face any missing dependencies, run the following command:

sudo apt install -f

Run the program:

rstudio

Note: Change the version no if required while downloading the RStudio package.

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