How to install R on openSUSE

The rolling openSUSE Tumbleweed release ships R as distribution-managed RPM packages, so the interpreter can follow the same update path as the rest of the system. The official R-base package installs the command-line runtime, development components, and recommended packages without maintaining a separate source build.

The package is available from Tumbleweed's official OSS repository. The openSUSE package catalog does not provide an official R-base package for Leap 16.0, so these instructions deliberately exclude Leap and do not add a community or experimental repository.

No service needs to be enabled after installation. The installed-package record identifies the repository, vendor, version, and architecture, while a base-package calculation through Rscript confirms that the noninteractive interpreter can execute code without user or site startup files.

Related: Install an R package from CRAN

Steps to install R on openSUSE Tumbleweed:

  1. Refresh the enabled Tumbleweed repository metadata. 
    $ sudo zypper refresh
All repositories have been refreshed.
  2. Install the R-base metapackage from the official repository. 
    $ sudo zypper install --no-confirm R-base

    The transaction installs R, Rscript, development components, standard modules, and recommended packages.

  3. Inspect the installed R-base package record. 
    $ zypper info R-base
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

Information for package R-base:
-------------------------------
Repository     : repo-oss
Name           : R-base
Version        : 4.6.1-58.1
Arch           : aarch64
Vendor         : openSUSE
Installed Size : 0 B
Installed      : Yes
Status         : up-to-date
##### snipped #####

    The version, architecture, and repository label change with Tumbleweed snapshots and local repository naming. R-base is a metapackage, so its own installed size can be 0 B while dependency packages contain the runtime files.

  4. Evaluate a base-package calculation through the installed Rscript command. 
    $ Rscript --vanilla --default-packages=base -e 'sum(1:10)'
[1] 55