Minh Nguyen wrote: > Hi, > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:35 PM, DigDug_the_2nd<dugthemath...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I installed Sage binary under WINDOWs Vista using the VM Player >> as described in the Installation Manual . . . so far so good . . . but >> I'm a little unsure what the VM Player is actually doing. Sage is not >> installed in the ordinary sense that a program is usually >> installed . . . right? What I'd really like to do is put the Sage_ROOT >> on the PATH and then access all the packages in Sage and the >> additional ones added to it. Can I do this by pointing the PATH to the >> folder that contains the VM Player files that I downloaded as the >> binary distribution for WINDOWs? > > Short answer: No. > > Longer answer: Currently the best way to run/use Sage under Windows is > to use the VMware image. This essentially is an Ubuntu Linux image > that is loaded using the WMware player. That means that the compiled > version of Sage in that VMware image has been compiled for a Linux > system, where the binary format is different from Windows. It's like > you can't execute a Linux binary under Windows and vice versa (unless > you use an emulator or a virtual machine).
Though I use Windows as little as possible, does the VMware image slow if there is not hardware support for some instructions? I believe there are some instructions in modern processors which make running one OS inside another quite practical, which should be good news for users of modern machines. However, on my Sony VAIO laptop, Sony in their infinite wisdom has written the BIOS so they can't be used. So for me, running XP inside OpenSolaris would be slow, despite the fact the processor would support it. It has been suggested that the BIOS is an AMD one, and I could download a BIOS from AMD not Sony, but that is a bit risky. If there are issues like this, it would be worth mentionnig them on the Sage page, as it could give the impressions Sage is a lot slower than it needs to be. It might in some cases be possible for users to enable these instructions in the BIOS, but Sony for whatever reason have decided not to - perhaps they get Vista at a lower price from Microsoft if they agree to disable the hardware support that makes running on OS inside another more difficult. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
