Today in computing mysteries

Feb 24, 2020 17:56

so for some reason my linux laptop hates R. This is confusing because:

- the specs on this machine are similar to my 2015 MacBook Pro, which runs R without issues beyond occasional slowness (same 8GB of RAM, similar processing speed iirc, both SSD drives)

- this machine runs similarly computationally intensive python code quite cheerfully

HOWEVER

- when using RStudio, my R session kept crashing anytime it dealt with large arrays

- so I switched to R in a Jupyter notebook (well, technically Hydrogen in Atom but that’s essentially the same thing) and that froze the whole machine until it was done working

- I have not done anything super complicated in straight up command line R from a terminal, but at this point I doubt that’d make much difference. also, that would be a shitty long-term solution regardless

I have 2 questions for anyone who knows wtf I'm talking about:

1. WHY?

2. Can I make R work better? How?

Alternatively, I could apparently set up a remote notebook server on my mac and access it on my linux laptop, but that sounds like an even bigger pain in the ass.

(relatedly, I configured my mac (which is no longer a laptop due to screen issues that means it needs an external display) to allow me to SSH in remotely, and to test that it was working I installed a terminal emulator (Terminus) on my phone which now means that I can execute R scripts to process multiple gigabytes of data... FROM MY PHONE. Which is the most hackerish thing ever and I am vastly amused by it)

tech

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