R for DebianScience.
Pros
entire environment is oriented around data analysis and visualization.
- Produces high-quality output in a variety of graphics formats: pdf, ps, eps, png, jpeg, ...
- Includes a real programming language, which turns out to be important for more sophisticated plots.
- Very active user community.
CRAN Archive network with over 600 contributed packages.
Cons
Package maintenance
- R (source package r-base) and several dozen packages from CRAN (run 'apt-cache rdepends r-base-core' to generate a list) are maintained directly in Debian
A description on how to install R packages from CRAN into users home directory (i.e. without root privileges).
AliothPkgCran and AliothPkgBioc aim to automated creation of several hundred add-on packages from the CRAN and BioConductor repositories.
Directly on Alioth (Join!)