Hi, When it's for me, for research, we're allowed to get an admin account (after jumping a number of admin approval hoops). I still found it difficult because the VPN is installed by deffect and cannot be turned off even by admin and it blocks a number of things (on top of my head package install, there may be other things). I learned to manually kill its access every time I restart via Services but there's a limit as to what one can expect the average user to know, figure out (or how much they dare to break security policy).
In any case, that's beyond the point. Sure, one can "demand" but the actual nature of the power relationship at many unis is a different one. I'm sure our CS department would prefer Linux running in the computers that their students use and tried demanding this but it didn't work, which makes it difficult to run certain courses. I currently don't teach but when I do again, if I want to run classes with Sage (increasing the teaching base), I will sadly require a non WSL option (which, as I say, we still have as they kept 9.1 although I suppose at one time it'll go). I also know that our students would likely not manage to successfully do the current installation (or give up). I know of the difficulties that the previous Windows version posed. Perhaps Sage cannot simply run on Windows without WSL just like programming (or maths) is not for everyone. But we were asked for feedback, so that was mine, based on the situation here, not so much my preferences. I agree with the problems that MS products pose. I wish the issue stopped with Sage. Email via Outlook is a daily nightmare (and expensive) but again, we don't have the power to force IT go out of it (or the 'we' is not large enough or has more survival battles to fight). Please, don't shoot the reporter. Best wishes, Jesus ---------------------- On Fri, 22 Aug 2025, 21:42 Dima Pasechnik, <dimp...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 10:29 AM aska...@gmail.com <askat...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > I use Sagemath on Windows (essentially because my university only > supports Windows, but also because I prefer Windows to other systems and I > cannot really deal with having separate machines for programming and > everything else). My university provides Sagemath on version 9.1 on the old > Windows installer (and I fear they discontinue it once they find out that > it is no longer supported). Using it via WSL doesn't work unless one has > admin privileges and knows how to disable our VPN (which is something we > are not meant to do, and that I am pretty sure they don't know I know how > to do). > > It's just a non-starter. "My employer only allows MS-DOS, ChatGPT, and > typewriters" sort of thing. > > WSL is an essential part of Windows. Demand WSL support from your employer. > They need to understand that a lot of research software does not run > on Windows, and won't ever, most probably. > What does WSL have to do with VPN, or admin privileges (yes, one > sometimes might need to be an admin on the WSL vm, it does not mean > admin on the Windows box). > > > > > > I am saying the above because my feedback would be to get as close as > possible to "no WSL" as many universities tend to disable it. If I > understand correctly from your link, approach D may get close to this? If > you have specific requests for feedback (i.e. if you want me to try > something), let me know and I can do this in September. > > Approach D is very far from being done. It requires years of dedicated > person-year work, and the persons in question have to be very capable. > Unless Micro$oft or some other big company forks out a sizeable grant > for this to happen (and other funding just should not go there, > because more working on Windows software ports is mostly bringing more > benefits to their shareholders, the benefits to the society as the > whole from ports to Windows are negative!), it probably won't happen. > Life is too short to be wasted on banging one's head against horrible > M$ engineering problems. > > Dima > > > > > Thanks for making new Sagemath options for Windows users! > > > > Best, > > > > Jesús > > > > On Monday, 18 August 2025 at 18:45:30 UTC+2 seb....@gmail.com wrote: > >> > >> > A big thanks, Marc. > >> > >> +1 > >> > >> > I am looking forward to testing it with my colleagues, students and > friends, especially those on Windows. > >> > >> BTW: Eight months ago, we reactivated the sage-windows repository, > which was once used to provide Windows installers for Sage via Cygwin. The > goal was to create a place where we could share the current status of our > efforts to provide easy access for Windows users and finally make such > installers available from there. Unfortunately, work on the repository has > stalled, primarily due to a lack of feedback. > >> > >> There are currently four approaches to obtaining installers for Sage on > Windows, again. At least the approach marked with "C" still works for all > Sage releases available on DockerHub. I suggest adding AppImage as a fifth > approach. > >> > >> > >> GMS schrieb am Samstag, 16. August 2025 um 11:10:33 UTC+2: > >>> > >>> > >>> A big thanks, Marc. I am looking forward to testing it with my > colleagues, students and friends, especially those on Windows. > >>> > >>> Best, > >>> > >>> Guillermo > >>> > >>> On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 at 10:56, Eric Gourgoulhon <egourg...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> This is great news! > >>>> Thank you very much for making this possible! > >>>> > >>>> Eric. > >>>> > >>>> Le vendredi 15 août 2025 à 16:34:29 UTC+2, marc....@gmail.com a > écrit : > >>>>> > >>>>> The 3-manifolds project is now distributing a beta version of > SageMath-x86_64.AppImage . > >>>>> This means that SageMath 10.7 can be installed and run on any > version of linux which is compatible with manylinux2014 by downloading one > file and marking it as executable. The compatible linux systems include > Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 12 and the default ubuntu image for Windows 11 WSL2, > none of which are currently providing any sagemath packages. > >>>>> > >>>>> This continues our effort to make sage accessible to the large group > of users which includes most students and most of their professors and > which consists of people who are not interested in, or not capable of, > learning how to compile sage or maintain 3rd party package managers -- > people who expect to be able to just download a program and run it. While, > as a reader of this email list, you probably do not belong to that group, > we are hoping that you do have an interest in increasing access to sage and > that you might be interested in testing the AppImage and reporting any > issues you encounter. > >>>>> > >>>>> For those who are not familiar with the AppImage format, it is > simply an ELF binary executable file containing a very small program with > an arbitrarily large squashfs filesystem appended. The small program does > a fuse mount of the squashfs filesystem and then execs a main program > located at the root of the filesystem. The squashfs should contain all > library dependencies of the main program, and all dynamic libraries should > be loaded from an rpath pointing into the squashfs. That way the AppImage > has no external dependencies. > >>>>> > >>>>> - Marc > >>> > >>> > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "sage-devel" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/afeebaa6-19f8-4d46-b829-17be28f84db5n%40googlegroups.com > . > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sage-devel/mbuGsrmkhpE/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAAWYfq0v7t7ew8pi%2BZFJgSEP9YC4doYh0LBJMKzj7x_H7%3DWCwQ%40mail.gmail.com > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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