REvolution Computing's enhanced distribution of R, REvolution R, has been available for free download from our website for Windows and MacOS for over a year now, and has been used by thousands of R users for high-performance statistical data analysis. Soon, we'll be expanding our free distributions to Ubuntu Linux, with the release of REvolution R 3.0.
Like the Windows and MacOS versions, REvolution R 3.0 for Ubuntu Linux includes performance enhancements that make common mathematical operations (like matrix multiplication and decomposition) faster than in regular R. These optimized math libraries are also multi-threaded, so if you're using a multi-CPU or multi-core workstation or laptop, REvolution R will use all available CPUs for many mathematical operations.
REvolution R 3.0 also features new parallel programming tools for R, so you can write loops in R which run faster by using multiple CPUs simultaneously. The new "foreach" function acts as a replacement for the "for" loop and functions like "lapply", while the "doMC" function enables multiple iterations of the loop to run simultaneously.
REvolution R 3.0 is 100% compatible with the most recent version of R (R 2.9.2), so all the scripts and packages you currently use with R will produce exactly the same results in REvolution R 3.0 (although they may take less time to run).
When the new 9.10 release of Ubuntu Linux (codenamed "Karmic Koala") is released on October 29, REvolution R will be immediately available as a download from the Ubuntu repositories. (If you're already using the Karmic beta release, it's available right now.) You can install REvolution R for Ubuntu by entering the following command:
sudo apt-get install revolution-r
If you already have R installed in Ubuntu (or only install the r-base-core package), when you upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 you'll see the following message when starting R:
REvolution R enhancements not installed. For improved
performance and other extensions: apt-get install revolution-r
[Some technical information for Ubuntu junkies: the "revolution-r" package builds on the "r-base-core" package so that they can both share other R-related package dependencies (like all the CRAN packages), which saves time for the volunteer maintainers of the upstream packages. Other than the message above, the r-base-core package is otherwise unmodified in 9.10, and if you wish you can suppress that message by modifying the Rprofile.site file.]
We're very excited to be expanding the supported platforms of REvolution R to Ubuntu Linux, and we hope that the performance improvements and parallel computing tools make R even better for many users. Thanks go to our friends at Canonical for helping us introduce REvolution R to Ubuntu, and special thanks go to Debian developer and R contributor Dirk Eddelbuettel for invaluable technical assistance in creating and submitting the REvolution R packages for Ubuntu.
By the way, if you have any questions about using any of the REvolution R distributions, don't forget you can always ask questions in our REvolution R forums where other REvolution R users and our technical staff are ready to help.
Excititng to hear that multi-core computing iscoming to R!
Can you comment on the licensing chain? Throughout the development of *nix, from bsd to debian to ubuntu, the software ecosystem has supported a variety of licenses. Does the package's inclusion in karmic imply gpl, and where does the rest of the REvolutions work fall? As iphones have roundly proved, un-open source isn't *bad*, while choice is good.
Posted by: Helmingstay | October 21, 2009 at 00:03
Speaking of iphones, spell-check and bluetooth keyboards wouldn't hurt. If you're listening, Apple... Choice.
Posted by: Helmingstay | October 21, 2009 at 00:06
Please fix the download link in the top of the post (there is an extra http:// in the link).
Thank you,
Nagu
Posted by: Nagu | October 21, 2009 at 12:48
I installed REvolution R using the Synaptic Package Manager but how do I launch it? There's no icon in the Ubuntu Applications menu. (Linux Newbie)
Posted by: Gary | November 05, 2009 at 02:56
Gary,
Best to ask that question on the REvolution R forums. They can help you there.
Posted by: David Smith | November 10, 2009 at 08:20
What do you mean in this part "We're very excited to be expanding the supported platforms of REvolution R to Ubuntu Linux, and we hope that the performance improvements and parallel computing tools make R even better for many users"
Posted by: excessive sweating control | May 04, 2010 at 16:45