On Tuesday, 10 January 2012 01:11:37 UTC+8, William wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 7:32 AM, Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Wiliam, > > > > Karl-Dieter told me that you found some problem with the virtual > > machine but he didn't recall any details. What exactly is the issue? > > Volker, > > My perspective changed a lot because I spent so much time during the > last week trying to help many mathematicians to install and use Sage > at a huge conference, the Sage exhibit booth, and the short course. > Here's what I think: > > (1) Virtual machines (or possibly co-Linux, maybe) is the only thing > we should put any effort toward for Windows. A native Microsoft C++ > port or a Cygwin port are both a waste of time. I thus strongly > applaud your effort to make a VM (and anybody else's). > Yes, I think it's a good idea to stop spending time etc on Cygwin port. It is a huge PITA to use it in its present state (having spent quite a bit of time on it last year) , and unless there is a drastic improvement coming in (e.g., a good 64-bit port, which would actually fix the fork blues, AFAIK), it's not going to work well, ever.
> (2) The virtual machine should be as usable as possible, even if > networking between the VM and guest can't be configured. This means a > GUI, tools (for mouse integration), and at least a web browser are all > installed. > > (3) The networking configuration in Linux (inside the VM) needs to be > very robust. > > I realize that some of this is philosophically different than what you > think about how a VM should be made for Sage, so I'll do my best to > justify my opinions below. > > DETAILS: > > (1) I've *used* Sage on Cygwin and worked a lot on the port several > times. The basic problems are that (a) Cygwin is 32-bit only, (b) > forking in windows is massively fubar'd and very slow, (c) DLL > "rebasing" makes Sage-on-cygwin brittle and insane. A massive problem > with a native port is that even if it were done (a big if), it would > be far, far too much work to maintain as new versions of components of > Sage are constantly updated and released, Windows is updated, etc.; we > can't even keep up with OS X releases, where every component is well > supported. > > (2) I can't tell you how many times during the last week that I > watched somebody load the Sage VM, see a textbox telling them to > browse to localhost, try to copy it and have their cursor get stuck in > the VM, think their computer crashed, etc., then type it in by hand > somewhere and mess up (e.g., type https instead). Then once they do > all that it often doesn't work anyways. Windows networking on a > laptop is a random beast, often firewalled and fubar'd by mandatory > antivirus software, and half broken. If people have downloaded and > installed Sage, let's at least give them something that immediately > works with 99% probability: have the VM boot up with Firefox > pre-logged into a running local notebook server and mouse integration > so the mouse doesn't get stuck and copy-paste works. It's > definitely possible to do this and not use a lot of disk space by > running from a compressed filesystem (with an overlay so you still > have read/write -- I've done it before). I remember doing this with > only about 600MB of disk space used *after* extracting the zip. > > (3) Often when I investigated further I would find that eth0 had > turned into eth1 on bootup, which completely kills everything from the > user's point of view (though the user doesn't even get an error > message!). Nearly anybody using MS Windows is going to be completely > stuck when the solution is: "configure the eth1 interface, run the > notebook command manually from the command line, and memorize a > random-looking 4-digit ip address". I've made VM's for Sage for > years (before I ran out of steam around a year ago), and I remember > spending a lot of time dealing via Python scripts with the possibility > that Linux renames eth0 to eth1, etc. It seems the current VM > doesn't successfully do this. > > Anyway, I'm just reporting on what I saw last week. I know that > making VM's is really difficult, can take a huge amount of time, and > testing them is even harder yet. But I'm all for it, since I think a > good VM has the best chance of addressing the "Sage-for-Windows" > problem. However, I think that the solutions offered so far (by me, > you, and others) for a Sage VM on Windows have simply failed to solve > the problem. > > I think co-Linux is also worth looking at again. It's cool because it > is *not* a virtual machine (you can even install Windows in > VirtualBox, and install co-Linux into that Windows install). It has > direct access to the windows filesystem, the network, etc., just like > a normal application. But it's Linux. I just checked their website > (http://www.colinux.org/), and they made a release a few months ago, > and also claim to have new corporate sponsorship for a 64-bit port. > coLinux looks promising. What does stop one from putting Sage on it presently? Dima > -- William > > -- > William Stein > Professor of Mathematics > University of Washington > http://wstein.org > > -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
