Positron Pro Sessions

Overview

Posit Workbench allows you to launch Positron Pro sessions from the home page via the Job Launcher, if configured. In active Positron Pro sessions, users can work within the Positron IDE and remain within the administrative framework Posit Workbench provides, such as authentication, PAM session management, etc.

Requirements

The following must be configured correctly before Positron Pro sessions can be launched:

Job Launcher: See the Job Launcher section for configuration information.
SSL: See the SSL Configuration section for more configuration information.

Limitations

Supported Linux distributions:

RHEL 8 / 9 / 10
Ubuntu Linux 22 and 24

The team plans to add support for OpenSUSE and SLES in a subsequent release in 2025.

Supported R versions:

Positron supports R versions 4.2 and higher.

For more information on older, unsupported R versions, please reference Positron - Unsupported R installations.

Supported Python versions:

Positron supports 3.9 and higher.

Positron follows the Python EoL schedule and works with actively supported Python versions.

Upgrade from preview releases

Starting with Posit Workbench 2025.09, Positron Pro is no longer a preview feature. When upgrading an existing Posit Workbench installation from version 2025.05 or earlier, the upgrade process will automatically back up any existing Positron Pro configuration files to ensure production-ready defaults are properly installed.

During the upgrade, the following files will be backed up if they exist:

/etc/rstudio/positron.conf as /etc/rstudio/positron.conf.bak
/etc/rstudio/positron-user-settings.conf as /etc/rstudio/positron-user-settings.conf.bak

After the package upgrade, review the backup files and the new default configuration files, then merge any customizations as needed.

Allocate sufficient memory for Positron Pro sessions

If you have configured resource profiles following the instructions at Setup resource profiles, you should allocate at a minimum 2.5 GB of RAM to each Positron Pro session with 4 GB recommended for a better user experience and additional headroom. However, the optimal memory allocation depends on your users’ workload.

For more information, see Other Resources for Positron Pro.