jlacko, jcblum and technocrat,
thanks to all of you for clarifying my doubts about R packages and Linux! I chose jlacko's answer as a solution, because I think RStudio Server suits my use case best, but I'm really thankful to all of them for your help.
PS I considered @mentioning you all in the post to make sure you would get my thanks, but that feature shouldn't be abused according to the community's guidelines