RStudio — PC Install and More

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This page is based on the installation of RStudio on a PC computer using the Firefox web browser(version 61.0.2). The process took place on August 20, 2018. The standard version of RStudio at that time was 1.1.456. Please understand that web pages change, software changes, and installation systems change. Thus, what is recorded here, although true at the moment of recording, may have changed by the time you read this.

Also, as I hope is obvious, the images below have been annotated, in GREEN, to show you where you need to point and click.

Just a few quick notes:

  1. We will short-circuit the installation by starting not at the RStudio main web page but rather right at the point where we choose the file to use.
  2. This particular installation was done in Windows 10 using Firefox, version 61.0.2.
  3. Firefox had previously been configured to always ask the user for the location in which to save downloaded files.
  4. The installation of the software is done in Figure 11.
  5. Following the installation this page shows a "do nothing" run of the program. This is not the suggested method, for this class, for starting the RStudio.
  6. Many of the Figures have been shrunk to facilitate display and printing. The shrinking is done within the web page display and, therefore, if you point at an image and "right click" on it you should be able to select an option to dispaly the actual, larger, image in a separate window.
  7. This material has not been formatted for printing so if you do print it you will get a lot of blank space and the Figure numbers may be separated from the images by page breaks.

To install RStudio, we will go to the RStudio web site at the https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/#download web site. This should open a page almost identical to the one shown in Figure 1. For a PC we want to use the RStudio 1.1.456 - Windows Vista/7/8/10 option, the one highlighted by the green arrow in Figure 1. Click on that link.

Figure 1

The particular installation of Firefox used here was set to ask the user where downloaded files should be saved. The version that you use may or may not be similarly configured. That will not matter since we will use a different feature of Firefox, in Figure 4, to run the downloaded file no matter where it has been saved. [A similar feature exists an any of the other modern browsers.] Firefox first asks if we want to Save File, as shown in Figure 2. We do want to save the file so we click the Save File button.

Figure 2

As just noted, the version of Firefox here wants to have us determine where to save the file. In the case shown here it will be saved in the directory structure downloads although the particular place is immaterial to this presentation. If you see a window such as that shown in Figure 3, just click on the Save button.

Figure 3

Once the file is downloaded to your computer we need to run the file. On the top bar of the Firefox screen we find the down arrow, , icon as highlighted in Figure 4. Click on that icon.

Figure 4

When you click on that icon, a new window shows up displaying the recent downloads. In Figure 5 we see the RStudio-1.1.456.exe file that we just downloaded.

Figure 5

If we move the cursor into that window the contents of the window changes, slightly, to that shown in Figure 5a.

Figure 5a

To run that file we click on the file name as indicated in Figure 5a.

At this point, on this computer using Windows 10, the operating system wants to get a confirmation that it is OK to actually run the program that we downloaded. [Note that running any downloaded program is possibly dangerous if the original site had a corrupted or infected file waiting for you.] In this case we are confident that the source of our file is to be trusted so we click the Yes button.

Figure 6

The install program starts. We will just step through the options. Figure 7 shows the first screen and we move on by clicking the Next button.

Figure 7

The same is true for the window shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8

The same is true for the window shown in Figure 9. However, it is worth noting that the installation program, in Figure 9, is asking about the location of the program's shortcut. By not making any changes here we instruct the installation program to put that shortcut into the Start menu. We will see this in Figure 26. .

Figure 9

Figure 10 catches the install progress screen as the installation continues.

Figure 10

Finally, in Figure 11, the installation is complete and we can click the Finish button to move forward.

Figure 11

Now that RStudio has been installed, we want to be able to run it. This page demonstates such a run, but this is not the suggested method for doing this in this class. That will be shown in a separate page, Typical Problem Steps.
The installation of RStudio created an icon, as shown in Figure 12, on the desktop.

Figure 12

Click on that icon. RStudio opens as shown in Figure 13. The RStudio window is divided into 3 panes, the Console, the Environment (which can alternatively display the History), and the Files (which has a number of other options).

Figure 13

We see that RStudio is installed and working. For the purpose of this web page we are done. To quit RStudio we will use the menu item File. Click on that menu item to open the selection screen shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14

Click on the quit Session... selection and RStudio terminates.

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©Roger M. Palay     Saline, MI 48176     August, 2018