Windows 10/11

Prerequisites

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) enables you to access the power of both Windows and Linux at the same time on a Windows machine. WSL lets you install a Linux distribution (such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Kali, Debian, Arch Linux, etc.) and use Linux applications, utilities, and Bash command-line tools directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dualboot setup.

Warning

You must use Windows 10/11 to run WSL.

  This module is required only to install Docker Desktop. You can ignore this step if you don’t plan to install Docker.

To install WSL, open PowerShell or Windows Terminal in Administrator mode by right-clicking and selecting “Run as administrator”, and enter the following command:

## Install Windows Subsystem for Linux ----
wsl --install

Restart your machine to complete the installation.

This command enables the features necessary to run WSL and install the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. After the reboot, a terminal will ask you to pick a username and a password for Ubuntu.

Finally, just ensure that you use the version 2 of WSL. Close and reopen PowerShell or Windows Terminal in Administrator mode by right-clicking and selecting “Run as administrator”, and enter the following command:

## Set WSL default version ----
wsl --set-default-version 2

That’s it! You have install Ubuntu as a Windows App.

Update your Linux system regularly

Keep your Ubuntu distribution up-to-date by running:

## Update Linux packages ----
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Installation

Software	Description	Website
R	The R environment	link
Rtools	A toolbox to build R packages from source	link
RStudio Desktop	Integrated development environment (IDE) for R	link
Pandoc	Document converter used by rmarkdown	link
Quarto CLI	Scientific publishing system built on Pandoc	link
Git	Version control software	link
Docker Desktop	Containerization software	link

We are going to install the required software by using Chocolatey, a package manager for Windows. A package manager is a way to get software (and software updates) onto your machine without much work on your part. It’s the Windows equivalent of yum, pacman or apt-get.

To install Chocolatey, open PowerShell or Windows Terminal in Administrator mode by right-clicking and selecting “Run as administrator”, and enter the following command:

## Install Chocolatey Package Manager ----
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Check your installation by running:

## Get Chocolatey version ----
choco --version
# Chocolatey v2.3.0

It’s time to install the required softwares:

## Install R environment ----
choco install r r.studio rtools

## Install git ----
choco install git

## Install literate programing tools ----
choco install pandoc quarto

## Install Docker ----
choco install docker-desktop

In addition, we need to install the package quarto:

## Install quarto package ----
install.packages("quarto")

Finally, let’s install a LaTeX distribution to convert documents from .Rmd (or .qmd) to .pdf. We are going to install a lightened distribution w/ the package tinytex.

## Install tinytex package ----
install.packages("tinytex")

## Install LaTeX distribution ----
tinytex::install_tinytex()

Important

If you already have a LaTeX distribution, do not use tinytex.

Check

  Restart your machine.

Open RStudio and run:

## Get R version ----
R.version.string
# "R version 4.4.2 (2024-10-31)"

## Check if git is installed ----
Sys.which("git")
#                               git
# "C:\\PROGRA~1\\Git\\cmd\\git.exe"

## Check if Rtools is installed ----
Sys.which("make")
#                               make 
# "C:\\rtools44\\usr\\bin\\make.exe"

## Check if Pandoc is installed ----
Sys.which("pandoc")
#                                    pandoc 
# "C:\\PROGRA~3\\CHOCOL~1\\bin\\pandoc.exe"

## Check if Quarto is installed ----
Sys.which("Quarto")
#                                    Quarto 
# "C:\\PROGRA~3\\CHOCOL~1\\bin\\Quarto.exe"

## Check if LaTeX is installed ----
Sys.which("pdflatex")
#                                                                    pdflatex 
# "C:\\Users\\janedoe\\AppData\\Roaming\\TinyTex\\bin\\windows\\pdflatex.exe" 

## Check if Docker is installed ----
Sys.which("docker")
#                                                    docker 
# "C:\\PROGRA~1\\Docker\\Docker\\RESOUR~1\\bin\\docker.exe" 

## Install package from sources ----
install.packages("jsonlite", type = "source")

Update your system regularly

Keep your Windows Apps up-to-date by running:

## Check for updates ----
choco outdated

## Update Windows Apps ----
choco upgrade all

Configuration

You’ve just installed a working environment for data science w/ , , and .
Now follow instruction to configure your system.