In fall 2007 I made the switch to Ubuntu Linux as an operating system by purchasing a Dell Linux machine. Ubuntu combines Debian Linux as base operating system with Gnome, a GUI front end, for a user-friendly version of Linux. On the whole I have been pretty happy: All of the software I use is free, and the system is fast and efficient. The biggest downside is the lack of formal documentation, but for the most part I have found several online user groups to be helpful as I work through any difficulties:

This webpage exists to chronicle the steps that I took to make my laptop ready for social scientific computing in hopes that it might save time for others pursuing the same end. It itemizes what I had to do to install LaTeX (desktop publishing), R (open source econometric software), and JAGS (open source Bayesian inference with Gibbs sampling). In the directions below, anything in a box with a yellow background is code that was entered into the Linux terminal. (The pink box refers to code that went into a source file.) Please let me know if you have any suggestions for this website.

LaTeX
In Linux, there are two releases of LaTeX: TeTeX and TeXLive (much like MiKTeX is the widest release for Windows and MacTeX is the release for Mac). When I installed LaTeX, I ran the following three lines of code in my terminal, first to install TeTeX, then Kile (the front-end). Having used Kile for awhile now, I belive that it automatically installed TeXLive along with the front end in an integrated system. If that is true, then the third line of code should be sufficient for a fully-functioning LaTeX sytem. (Let me know what happens if you try the third line only.): 
sudo apt-get install tetex-bin tetex-base     # the basic, essential packages
sudo apt-get install tetex-extra     # an optional line to install the extra packages
sudo apt-get install kile     # installs Kile, the front-end
After running these three lines, the following three lines of terminal code are necessary so that you can view .dvi, .dpf, .ps, and .eps file in viewers that are integrated with Kile: 
sudo apt-get install kdvi
sudo apt-get install kpdf
sudo apt-get install kghostview

Once you have installed, Kile should be ready to use as a GUI application in Gnome under "Applications"→"Office".

R
To install R, you need to add a CRAN mirror to update manager. To do this, open the file "sources.list" with the following line of terminal code: 
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Once you've got this file open, add the following line of code to the file: 
deb http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu hardy/
That particular line of code can be manipulated somewhat: It uses my preferred CRAN mirror, which you can adjust, and it says "hardy" because I use ubuntu version 8.04, nicknamed Hardy Heron. Hence, you will want to list the nickname appropriate for your version of Ubuntu. After adding the line of code to "sources.list" you can install R with the following two commands in the terminal: 
sudo apt-get install r-base
sudo apt-get install r-base-dev

On account of my updates to the "sources.list" file, I have found that the latest version of R is always automatically installed on my computer. All I have to do is accept a variety of R updates whenever they show up on Ubuntu's all-purpose automatic update manager. If you prefer not to get these updates, you may choose to comment-out the extra line in "sources.list" with a #. Once you have installed, R runs from the terminal by simply typing-in "R". You can return to normal terminal mode by entering "q()" into R.

JAGS (Just Another Gibbs Sampler)
First go to Martyn Plummer's JAGS website and download "JAGS-1.0.3.tar.gz" (or the latest version) as the source code. Then unpack this zip file: I chose the directory "/home/monogan/downloads/JAGS-1.0.2". Once you do this, you may have to install some required software in the terminal: 
sudo apt-get install g77
sudo apt-get install gfortran
sudo apt-get install lapack3
sudo apt-get install lapack3-dev
After this, you will actually install JAGS from the source code using the following commands in the terminal: 
cd /home/monogan/downloads/JAGS-1.0.2
./configure
make
make install
On several occasions, I received an "access denied" message, so in the terminal I had to change the security on the following files: 
sudo chmod 777 /bin
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/include/
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/lib/
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/bin/
JAGS runs from the terminal by simply typing "jags". To return to the normal terminal, simply type "exit".