Does anyone know much about the difference between an R session opened by
typing M-x R, and the R session opened by org-babel?

I'm just learning R and my usual method for learning a language is to keep
a kind of notebook in org with code snippets they I can execute and iterate
on rapidly as I learn. This works great in R when I'm just doing math.
When I am working on plots, it would be nice to have them open up quickly
either in emacs or in the standard x11 window that R session opened switch
M-x R opens up.

I know I can set the src block headers to produ e a file, but when I'm just
iterating rapidly I often switch back and forth between a data output and a
graphical output, and typing/erasing those headers is clunky and slow. It
would be easier to just paste the plot command into the console and have it
pop open the window... But that doesn't seem to work. Anyone know if I can
tweak something to make that possible?

Thank you!

Matt