DATA MINING
Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams |
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Rattle is distributed as an R package and is freely available from CRAN, the Comprehensive R Archive Network. The source code is freely available from Google Code, where it is also possible to join the Rattle users mailing list.
Below we cover the installation of the system. The process is straightforward and we cover various contingencies and operating system differences.
For building a platform for Data Mining we recommend the Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system. This is a free alternative to Microsoft/Windows. It is easy to install and use, fully featured, and well supported. It is a GNU/Linux distribution based on the well regarded Debian distribution.
You can also run R without installing it! The Quantian live CD produced by Dirk Eddelbuettel can be used to boot your computer and run GNU/Linux from the CD, from where you can start up R and run it over data on your hard disk. All of this can be done without touching the operating system already installed on your hard disk. If you like what you see (and it will run slower from CD than a proper install to the hard disk) you can then install it properly.