R and RStudio installation instructions

Author

UQ Library

Published

January 22, 2026

Participants are welcome to bring and use their own laptops with the software already installed (with a working Internet connection), to ensure that you can continue using what you learn once you leave the workshop. However, if you need, you can use one of the Library’s training computers, a loan laptop, or a UQ-provided device, as they all offer the necessary software.

While R code can be written in various applications, we demonstrate the use of RStudio, a popular interface to write R code. To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio.

Please go through the installation steps below to install R and RStudio before the start of the workshop. Please also make sure that the software runs as expected once it is installed.

UQ computers

If you have an ITS-managed computer, you can install R and RStudio from Company Portal

If you use a Library-managed computer, you can install RStudio in ZENworks (which automatically installs R too).

Windows

To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio

Download R from the official website
Run the .exe file that was just downloaded
Go to the RStudio Download page
Select the Windows installer.
Double-click the file to install it
Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and there is no error messages.

macOS

To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio

Go to the R website
Select the .pkg file for the version of macOS that you have
Double-click on the file that was downloaded and R will install
Go to the RStudio Download page
Select the macOS installer
Once it’s downloaded, double-click the file to install it
Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and there is no error messages.

Linux

To use RStudio, you need to install both R and RStudio

Download R by following the instructions for your distribution from CRAN. For most distributions, you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install r-base, and for Fedora run sudo yum install R)
Go to the RStudio Download page
Select the installer for your distribution.
Once it’s downloaded, double click the file to install it, or use a command like sudo dpkg -i rstudio-x.yy.zzz-amd64.deb in the terminal
Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and there is no error message.