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  • 1.  Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-13-2017 12:06
    Hi,
    My college is currently moving away from hard drives and we will be using a "thin client" set up.
    Does R work under this set up?
    Thank you,
    Kelly

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    Kelly Fitzpatrick
    Assistant Professor
    County College of Morris
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  • 2.  RE: Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-14-2017 09:23
    That depends on the setup. I run R on a Linux server and use X11 on a local terminal to serve up the interface thru RStudio. You can see how such a setup can work by testing it on Amazon AWS.

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    Robert Yerex
    Senior Data Scientist
    UVA Medical System
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-14-2017 12:25
    Robert is certainly correct: it depends upon your setup. 

    I use ESS as my connection to R, and "ESS works with processes on remote computers as easily as with processes on the local machine."  By my understanding, it only requires an ssh connection between the machines.  The rest of that section points out how you can see graphics either with or without X11.  That's assuming, of course, that you can run Emacs on your local machine.  If you can't, you can still run ESS on the remote machine, but you'll have to access it another way.

    You should also be able to access your remote machine through VNC.  I've mostly used TightVNC, I think, but I've used other implementations, too.  You'd probably want an encrypted connection, either by using something like UltraVNC, which claims to encrypt their VNC session, or by tunneling through ssh.

    If your local machine is, for example, a Chromebook, I would think you should be able to run VNC or Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) on the Chromebook to access R on the remote machine.  That's on my list to try; I don't have a lot of experience with it, yet.

    Bill

    PS: It is possible to run Emacs on a Chromebook--or, for that matter, inside the Chrome browser--using the Native Client (NaCl) app.  See https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForChromeBooks, http://endlessparentheses.com/emacs-is-available-on-chromebook-and-chrome.html, and https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nacl-development-environm/aljpgkjeipgnmdpikaajmnepbcfkglfa?hl=en-US.  Since one of those links claims TRAMP did not work a year ago, you may have to use something like ess-remote in ESS to use ESS.  (NB: the last time I tried NaCl, it didn't work.  I think I messed up something in my configuration, but I'm not sure.)

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    Bill Harris
    Data & Analytics Consultant
    Snohomish County PUD
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-15-2017 08:03
    We've been running an RStudio server at Amherst for four years now and it's been the best thing since sliced bread: users need only bring a browser and there is centralized maintenance of packages.  A number of our students access it using Chromebooks.

    ASA member Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel gave a talk on the topic at eCOTS 2015.  The materials can be found here: https://github.com/mine-cetinkaya-rundel/useR-2015

    Nick

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    Nicholas Horton
    Amherst College
    Amherst, MA United States
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-14-2017 14:33
    I use RStudio Server from my chrome book all the time, it works fine for me.  



    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Does R work on Thin Client Set up

    Posted 04-17-2017 11:38
    I agree that RStudio server is a good choice. 

    For some of my classes I have successfully used R kernels in Jupyter notebooks hosted on the Microsoft Azurer Machine Leaning platform https://gallery.cortanaintelligence.com/Notebook/Tutorial-on-Azure-Machine-Learning-Notebook-1.  This capability only requires a web browser and a free-tier Azure Machine Learning account. I like the notebooks since I can add markdown text in line with the R code. 

    Somewhat confusingly, there are also Azure notebooks, which are essentially the same services, but on a different part of the platform. https://notebooks.azure.com/

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    Stephen Elston
    Principle Consultant
    Quantia Analytics, LLC
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    Original Message


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