On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 3:09 PM, bsdz <blai...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > I see what you mean by the download size. Perhaps another option might > be to offer the source code as a separate download if any is included.
Almost no source code is included, except for the core sage library (which isn't that much, especially compressed). >> VMware Sage is likely mostly going >> to be faster than a native windows port, especially on modern >> processors. > > I'm not too sure if this sounds correct. The VMware session is running > its own OS thread/process scheduling within a single Windows process > (priority 8) that in turn is also being prioritised by the real OS > (Windows). So "faster" doesn't sound right at all here. I won't try to argue this any further based on "pure thought". It's best to use benchmarks. In the informal benchmarks I've done, Windows and OS X (to a lesser extent) aren't so optimized for scientific computing, whereas Linux seems quite good for that. I've frequently found that in practice raw cpu-bound compute code runs in Linux under a virtual machine faster than natively on OS X and windows. For code to run quickly on a given OS, sometimes developers have to "tune" it, and developers of open source math software are more likely at present to have tuned code to work well on Linux than other OS's. Of course, I and many other people wish Microsoft Windows was also first rate for running open source mathematical software; this is, in fact, one of the main motivations of the people at Microsoft who have given money to support Sage development (and also R development). Microsoft definitely wants open source math software to work extremely well on their OS. > As for mounting Windows filesystems inside the VMware session, I admit > that is a solution but probably quite tricky for an ordinary Windows > user. I prefer to use WinSCP that gives the same look and feel as > Explorer. Could write a paragraph about using WinSCP which I could add to the README.txt file? > > -- > Blair > > On Jan 26, 8:48 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I just want to thank bsdz for responding, and emphasize that the point >> of this thread is mainly to see what options there are to make the >> VMware-sage experience much better, while we wait for the native >> windows port. There are likely many "highly annoying" issues people >> have with the vmware image that might be fully solvable with a little >> work. >> >> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 12:31 PM, bsdz <blai...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> >> > I feel one fairly big problem with the VMware installation is the >> > sheer size of the binary to download. >> >> If we used zip for the native windows version, then the size >> would be almost exactly the same. What makes the VMware >> version big is almost entirely that Sage is big. >> >> Probably the Sage/vmware machine should switch to using >> 7zip but bundled as an .exe so that users don't have to install >> 7zip (yes, 7zip is supposed to support this). Then the download >> size would be < 400MB. >> >> Also, the sage/vmware install includes a full latex system -- we >> could delete that saving probably at least 60MB of download size. >> >> We'll never get below about 350MB, since that's the size of Sage on >> linux already. Sage is a big problem. Of course, the MATLAB download >> is over 3 GB (!) (most of that is videos, data sets, etc.) >> >> > Other issues are performance; >> > running a Sage server in a VMware session is noticeable slower than >> > connecting to an on-line Linux version. >> >> For *raw computations* (cpu bound code, e.g., computing determinants, >> solving systems, etc.) VMware Sage is likely mostly going >> to be faster than a native windows port, especially on modern >> processors. The main speed loss is in the user interface, since >> that goes via a virtual network connection. One potential speed loss >> is because by default the VMware machine is configured to use >> 320MB of ram -- changing this involves changing a number in a text >> file that is in sage-vmware-*.zip. >> >> Do you have any precise benchmarks? >> >> > Then there are some practical >> > problems such as accessing the VMware file-system. After some playing >> > around I managed to find a way to SSH to the server and see the files >> > that way. >> >> This is a significantly annoying problem, but there is a way around >> it. One can actually just mount any native Windows filesystems in >> vmware if you read the vmware instructions. It's called using "VMware >> shared folders". This can be setup in VMware player without having to >> pay any money. >> >> Somebody else remarks that we can't ship VMware player and Sage >> bundled together. This is not quite true. One *can* as long as one >> gets permission from VMware. >> >> VirtualBox is also getting very good, by all accounts, and there are >> likely similar solutions to the problems listed above for VirtualBox. >> >> From a developer point of view, the biggest problem with using VMware >> for Sage on Windows is that it would be difficult to make it >> interoperate with programs like Microsoft Excel or other natives >> windows code. Even that isn't impossible, since it could be done via >> a network connection and some native windows library that abstracts >> away that network connection from the API. >> >> -- William > > > -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
