ANNOUNCEMENT: SageMath as an AppImage

[Marc Culler]

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

[Eric Gourgoulhon]

This is great news! 

Thank you very much for making this possible!

Eric.

[G. M.-S.]

A big thanks, Marc.  I am looking forward to testing it with my colleagues, students and friends, especially those on Windows.

Best,

Guillermo

[seb....@gmail.com]

> 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.

[Marc Culler]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 11:45 AM seb....@gmail.com <seb....@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

Thank you Sebastien; that would be great.

The AppImage is also useful for linux users, especially, but not only, for people using linux distros which have stopped packaging SageMath. But I am not sure where that information should be published.

- Marc

[Nils Bruin]

If we can keep these AppImages up-to-date then a mention in 

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/index.html

(in the linux section) would certainly seem appropriate.

These pages:

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/linux.html

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/binary.html#linux

would also be appropriate. I think the AppImage packaging would qualify as a binary distribution for linux.

I notice that the sagemath docker images aren't mentioned on those pages either. That could be appropriate as well.

I guess there's preference discussion possible here for how much we would want to promote the AppImage. It should certainly be one of the surest ways to run sage, but it may be a bit limited. Would "%cython" code work in it? Also, conda and source-based installs are more flexible in terms of allowing people to turn to developing as well. That said, the "conda" description involves a whole bunch of steps, whereas AppImage would be "download, make executable, run". Really, the only thing that can compete with that in terms of ease is "dnf install sagemath" (if that would work).

[Marc Culler]

On Monday, August 18, 2025 at 3:52:38 PM UTC-5 Nils Bruin wrote:

Would "%cython" code work in it?

Yes, it seems to work.  I tested using %%cython as a decorator for a simple factorial function.  The resulting function got the right answer, although it was a bit slower than the pure python version of the same code.  I think  that is probably a feature of %%cython, however, not of the AppImage.

- Marc

[Tobia...@gmx.de]

Thanks Marc and everyone involved in this work!

I second that it should be mentioned in the install section. And, to keep the appimage up-to-date, the build scripts and CI should be perhaps included in the main repo as well (similar to the existing docker build).

[aska...@gmail.com]

Hi,

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).

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.

Thanks for making new Sagemath options for Windows users!

Best,

Jesús

[seb....@gmail.com]

> If I understand correctly from your link, approach D may get close to this?

Yes, that's true. But I don't know the timeline for that.

I find it unfortunate that your university is withholding WSL from you, as I consider it the best thing Microsoft has produced in the last decade. Nevertheless, I think WSL should only be a temporary solution until option D is available (see also my comments in https://github.com/sagemath/sage-windows/issues/3).

> If you have specific requests for feedback (i.e. if you want me to try something)

Tobias, can you elaborate on this?

Best

Sebastian

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 10:29 AM aska...@gmail.com <aska...@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
>>>
>>>
>

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[Jesus Martinez Garcia]

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
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[seb....@gmail.com]

Thank you for this useful feedback!

[Nils Bruin]

On Friday, 22 August 2025 at 23:59:52 UTC-7 aska...@gmail.com wrote:

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'd definitely recommend offering cloud access to sagemath if you require its use for a course. It removes all installation issues. You could try to get IT to set up a cloud server for you that runs locally but in a shop that's gone full MS (as it sounds in your case) they'd probably much rather pay for an outsourced version, in which case cocalc is probably worth checking out.

Students who are interested in installing it on their own computer will be able to do it -- and those students would definitely have a machine that is not insanely locked down (is your university making available (university managed) laptops to all students? That's quite the service! Otherwise, the laptops that students have will not be locked down by IT, because those are not their machines).

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 1:59 AM Jesus Martinez Garcia
<aska...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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).

This is not a VPN what you describe, but some sort of spyware.
VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a tool to access intranets, it has
nothing to do with preventing you from doing things on your computer!

>
> 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.

"Demand" meaning that in your course proposal you set out the need to
have WSL, by spelling out options:

SageMath - needs WSL; Oscar - needs WSL; Macaulay2 - needs WSL; Magma
- needs $$$$ in license fees; Singular, SymPy, Pari/GP, GAP - not
powerful enough for the task at hand; HaskellForMath
(https://hackage.haskell.org/package/HaskellForMaths) - well, why
not...

And of course you spell out the advantage of Python as preparation for
the real world jobs (TM), etc etc etc, which
rules out Pari/GP and GAP (and, well, Oscar, even though Julia is
popular, but not nearly as much)

And you seek input and support from CS Dept on this.

Cheers
Dima

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAJvvKwvPE1C3%2B3kg6T_52WnJ5e22HT1ZbF4dSt7%2BQtFfJxN1SQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Tessa Weinstein]

I'm not using it in a course. I don't work at a university. There is no IT department. I'm it. It's for me and my personal use. I'm a professional math tutor who makes content for her students and wants to automate using it with LaTeX, that's all.

*********************************************
Tessa F. Weinstein, Ph.D.

www.tessatutors.com

*********************************************

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[Tessa Weinstein]

Sorry! I posted a question and I thought this was a response to my question! Ignore me. My apologies.

*********************************************
Tessa F. Weinstein, Ph.D.

www.tessatutors.com

*********************************************

[Dima Pasechnik]

Hi,

Would you mind to re-post your question - it's nowhere to be seen in our forum.

Dima

[Eric Gourgoulhon]

I gave it a try on a Ubuntu 24.04 computer: it works like a charm!

In particular, I've run this test notebook:
https://nbviewer.org/github/egourgoulhon/SageMathTest/blob/master/Notebooks/test_display.ipynb

and everything was OK, except for the %matplotlib widget magic in cell 22. But the latter requires the ipympl package:

https://matplotlib.org/ipympl/

Usually, this is fixed by a

pip install ipympl

but maybe it is technically not possible to install packages by pip within an AppImage? 

I've advertised the AppImage on the SageManifolds mailing list, as well as on these pages:

https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr/download.html

https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr/install_ubuntu.html

Thanks again for having developed this AppImage! It is certainly very useful to newcomers to Sage!

Eric.

Le vendredi 15 août 2025 à 16:34:29 UTC+2, marc....@gmail.com a écrit :

[Marc Culler]

Hi Eric,

You can install ipympl by running `%pip install ipympl` at a sage prompt.  It will do a "--user" install in your .local directory.

(Ubuntu 24.04 does not allow --user installs, but the AppImage does.)

Nominally an AppImage is read-only, but that is not strictly true.  You can unpack an AppImage, meaning that the internal squashfs filesystem gets written out as a normal directory in the filesystem containing the AppImage.  That can be modified and repacked using appimagetool.  However, there is no need for such shenanigans.  Just use `%pip`.

I was able to run your test_display notebook after installing ipympl that way.  Cell 22 worked.   It did produce a deprecation warning which looked like it would be easy to fix.

- Marc

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[Eric Gourgoulhon]

Le lundi 25 août 2025 à 16:08:53 UTC+2, marc....@gmail.com a écrit :

Hi Eric,

You can install ipympl by running `%pip install ipympl` at a sage prompt.  It will do a "--user" install in your .local directory.

(Ubuntu 24.04 does not allow --user installs, but the AppImage does.)

Thanks for the tip! It works well.

Eric.

[Grégory Vanuxem]

Hello,

Le lun. 18 août 2025 à 18:45, seb....@gmail.com <seb....@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> > 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.

I added a new comment, maybe it is of interest (simple WSL2 approach):

https://github.com/sagemath/sage-windows/issues/3

Greg