Understanding the Issue: Plotting in R Studio on Ubuntu 16.04

Introduction to R Studio and Ubuntu

R Studio is a popular integrated development environment (IDE) for R programming language. It provides a comprehensive set of tools, including code completion, debugging, and visualization. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is a Linux distribution that comes with many software packages pre-installed, including the R package manager.

However, installing R directly from the package manager may lead to issues, as discussed in the Stack Overflow post below.

Installing R and R Studio

The user installed R using Homebrew (brew install R) and then R Studio from a deb file. This approach can lead to conflicts between different versions of R and R Studio.

# Installing R and R Studio using Homebrew
$ brew install R

Using Homebrew to install R is not recommended, as it may not provide the most up-to-date version of the package manager. Additionally, mixing different versions of R and R Studio can lead to compatibility issues.

Understanding the Error

The error message indicates that there’s a problem with loading shared objects. The specific error is:

/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1: version ZLIB_1.2.9’ not found (required by /home/tha/.linuxbrew/lib/libpng16.so.16)`

This error occurs because the installed R package manager is trying to load a library that’s not available on the system.

The Correct Approach

The correct approach is to use the Ubuntu package manager to install R, which ensures that you get the most up-to-date version of the package manager. This also helps avoid compatibility issues with other packages.

# Installing R using the package manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base

Using the package manager also allows you to easily upgrade or downgrade R versions, ensuring that you have the latest security patches and features.

Resolving the Issue

To resolve the issue, you need to ensure that the required libraries are installed on your system. The error message indicates that libz is missing, which is a dependency for R.

# Installing libz
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

Additionally, you may also need to install other dependencies, such as libpng16-16, depending on the specific version of R Studio you’re using.

Troubleshooting and Verification

To troubleshoot the issue further, you can try the following:

• Check if there are any conflicts between different versions of R and R Studio.
• Verify that all dependencies are installed and up-to-date.
• Try running R from the terminal to ensure that it’s working correctly.

By following these steps, you should be able to resolve the issue and plot in R Studio on Ubuntu 16.04 without any errors.

Conclusion

Installing R and R Studio can be a bit tricky, especially when using Homebrew or other package managers. However, by understanding the dependencies and requirements of each package manager, you can ensure that your system is set up correctly.

Last modified on 2024-01-19