3  Installation

Before you begin using R, you need to install the language itself. It is recommended to also install and IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

3.1 Install R

CRAN mirrors are servers located in different places around the world containing R binaries and source code. Choose one near your physical location (for faster downloads), or select the cloud.r-project.org mirror, which automatically redirects your to a nearby server.

The R project maintains precompiled binary distributions of R for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Visit your CRAN mirror of choice and follow the instructions for your operating system.

3.2 Install Positron

Positron is “a next-generation data science IDE” built by Posit. First public release was made available on June 24 2024 and as stated in the GitHub repo “is an early stage project under active development”. This is a new IDE by the developers of RStudio built on top of VS Code open source (“Code OSS”). Positron comes with “batteries included” and is the recommended IDE for beginners.

If you are already familiar with and using another IDE (e.g., RStudio, VS Code, etc.) that supports R, you can continue using it.