Why does installing R package on Ubuntu return “configuration failed for package”?

Question

On windows os, I can easily install any package form the below command:

install.packages('package_name', dependencies = T)

But on Ubuntu, I usually get some error messages like

ERROR: configuration failed for package 'xyz'

Why do R package installations on Ubuntu lead to so many errors, even though the same commands in Windows's R rarely lead to errors?

Answer 1

I think for having a predictive result you first have to rename your existing R personal library with:

mv /home/$USER/R /home/$USER/R_old

Also, install the development package of curl:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

And after that try to install your R-package from R-terminal:

$ R

install.packages("forecast")

If you want to know more about R then do check out the R programming tutorial.