recommendation for stats and linear algebra software for PPC Linux

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

Hi,

I need to get back into doing linear algebra and statistics again (basic 
statistics, eigenvectors, regression, principal components, factor 
analysis, structural equation modeling at the level of SAS, SPSS, LISREL, 
etc.

I have found links to netlib and the literally tons of free/public domain 
software available for doing math and statistics.

I spent the afternoon downloading R (the GPL clone of Splus) and Octave, 
and the old EISPack source I remember using once a long time ago, and also 
downloaded blas, atlas, and lapack.

There is alot of stuff out there.   

If I am first and foremost looking for something to replace SAS/stat and 
SPSS primarily for statistics, general linear models, regression instead 
of my now ancient fortran code that invoked EISPACK routines to solve 
linear models,  are these the right packages to be looking at and playing 
with?

If not, what should I be using?  

Ideas and recommendations welcome.

Thanks,

Kevin