Tutorial

How To Install R on Ubuntu 18.04 [Quickstart]

Updated on May 15, 2020

How To Install R on Ubuntu 18.04 [Quickstart]

Introduction

R is an open-source programming language that specializes in statistical computing and graphics. In this tutorial, we will install R on an Ubuntu 18.04 server.

For a more detailed version of this tutorial, with better explanations of each step, please refer to How To Install R on Ubuntu 18.04.

Step 1 — Add GPG Key

Logged into your Ubuntu 18.04 server as a sudo non-root user, add the relevant GPG key.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9

Step 2 — Add the R Repository

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran40/'

If you’re not using 18.04, find the relevant repository from the R Project Ubuntu list, named for each release.

Step 3 — Update Package Lists

sudo apt update

Step 4 — Install R

sudo apt install r-base

If prompted to confirm installation, press y to continue.

Step 5 — Test Install

Start R’s interactive shell as root.

sudo -i R

You should receive output similar to the following:

Output
R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24) -- "Arbor Day"
Copyright (C) 2020 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
...
Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
Type 'q()' to quit R.

>

This confirms that we’ve successfully installed R and entered its interactive shell.

Here are links to more detailed tutorials that are related to this guide:

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About the authors

Lisa Tagliaferri

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Chad You • July 18, 2018

Thanks for sharing this! I’ve tried several solutions found online, and yours is the one works. A lot of solutions I found didn’t set up step 1 and 2 correctly.

antonnymuiko • November 6, 2019

The first step is not working what do I do about the GPG Key

xiaodai • October 9, 2019

I am using Windows WSL Ubuntu 18.04 and I am getting this an error when running

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/'

which is

Err:8 http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic/ Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 54.230.243.111 80]
Err:9 https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran36/ Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 54.230.243.243 443]

This can occurr in any of the Get’s eg. in this run it occurs in Err 8 & Err 9 but last time it was 5 & 6. Any ideas?

jamesCofI • September 16, 2019

Thank you Lisa. Once I realised the ‘relevant GPG key’ wasn’t a key unique to me I was happy :)

Muhumuza Pius • August 16, 2019

Thank you for thus step by step. It was really helpful.

Siddharth M • July 23, 2019

Hi Lisa… Thanks for the post. Please i would like to know the significance of first 2 steps. i am using Ubuntu 19.04 and i just performed the 4rth step alone and got it installed by skipping the rest.