Older R Releases Available

As of July 2023, packages for R versions below 4.0 are no longer being updated.

R 3.6 packages for Ubuntu on i386 and amd64 are available for most stable Desktop releases of Ubuntu until their official end of life date. However, only the latest Long Term Support (LTS) release is fully supported. As of November 18, 2018 the supported releases are Bionic Beaver (18.04;LTS), Xenial Xerus (16.04; LTS), and Trusty Tahr (14.04; LTS). Note, to install R 3.6 packages, a different sources.list entry is needed. See below for details. Even though R has moved to version 3.6, for compatibility the sources.list entry still uses the cran3.5 designation.

R 3.4 packages for Ubuntu on i386 and amd64 are available for all stable Desktop releases of Ubuntu prior to Bionic Beaver (18.04) until their official end of life date. However, only the latest Long Term Support (LTS) release is fully supported. As of November 18, 2018 the supported releases are Xenial Xerus (16.04; LTS), and Trusty Tahr (14.04; LTS).

See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases for details.

Installation

To obtain the latest R 3.6 packages, use:

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial-cran35/

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty-cran35/

To obtain the latest R 3.4 packages, use:

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial/

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. By using https://cloud.r-project.org, you will be automatically be redirected to a nearby CRAN mirror. See https://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html for the current list of CRAN mirrors.

To install the complete R system, use

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base

Users who need to compile R packages from source [e.g. package maintainers, or anyone installing packages with install.packages()] should also install the r-base-dev package:

sudo apt-get install r-base-dev

The R packages for Ubuntu otherwise behave like the Debian ones. One may find additional information in the Debian README file located at https://cran.R-project.org/bin/linux/debian/.

Installation and compilation of R or some of its packages may require Ubuntu packages from the “backports” repositories. Therefore, it is suggested to activate the backports repositories with an entry like

deb https://<my.favorite.ubuntu.mirror>/ focal-backports main restricted universe

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. See https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors for the list of Ubuntu mirrors.

Supported Packages

A number of R packages are available from the Ubuntu repositories with names starting with r-cran-. The following ones are kept up-to-date on CRAN: all packages part of the r-recommended bundle, namely

r-cran-boot
r-cran-class
r-cran-cluster
r-cran-codetools
r-cran-foreign
r-cran-kernsmooth
r-cran-lattice
r-cran-mass
r-cran-matrix
r-cran-mgcv
r-cran-nlme
r-cran-nnet
r-cran-rpart
r-cran-spatial
r-cran-survival

as well as

r-cran-rodbc

The other r-cran-* packages are updated with Ubuntu releases only. Users who need to update one of these R packages (say r-cran-foo) should first make sure to obtain all the required build dependencies with

sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-foo

Because they rely on the installed version of R, we also provide, on an experimental basis, versions of the following packages as up-to-date as the Ubuntu release allows:

littler
python-rpy2
jags

Please notice that the maintainers are not necessarily themselves users of these packages, so positive or negative feedback through the usual channels (see below) would be appreciated.

Finally, as an added convenience to Ubuntu users who interact with R through Emacs, we also provide an up-to-date version of the package

Secure APT

With the deprecation of apt-key, the recommended method for adding the key is:

wget -qO- https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/marutter_pubkey.asc | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc

To verify the key:

gpg --show-keys /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc

The fingerprint should be E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9.

Using apt-key

NOTE: There was an issue with a second key found on the Ubuntu keyserver. Details and how to remove can be found at http://rubuntu.netlify.com/post/changes-to-cran-ubuntu-webpage-regarding-apt-secure-key/.

The Ubuntu archives on CRAN are signed with the key of “Michael Rutter marutter@gmail.com” with key ID 0x51716619e084dab9. To add the key to your system with one command use (thanks to Brett Presnell for the tip):

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

An alternate method can be used by retrieving the key with

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9

and then feed it to apt-key with

gpg -a --export E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

Some people have reported difficulties using this approach. The issue is usually related to a firewall blocking port 11371. If the first gpg command fails, you may want to try (thanks to Mischan Toosarani for the tip):

gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9

and then feed it to apt-key with

gpg -a --export E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

Another alternative approach is to search for the key at http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/ and copy the key to a plain text file, say key.txt. Then, feed the key to apt-key with

sudo apt-key add key.txt

Additional CRAN Packages

For additional binary packages for R (currently well over 4,000+), check out the different CRAN2deb4ubuntu PPAs:

for R 3.5 and 3.6: https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/ubuntu/c2d4u3.5, or
for R 3.4: https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/ubuntu/c2d4u,

depending on which version of R you are using.