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Honest question - why are people so enthusiastic about Chocolatey? Most packages, including the Fiddler package, just run a small Powershell script that downloa

Honest question - why are people so enthusiastic about Chocolatey? Most packages, including the Fiddler package, just run a small Powershell script that downloads an installer from a known location (in this case https://www.telerik.com/docs/default-source/fiddler/fiddlersetup.exe https://www.telerik.com/docs/default-source/fiddler/fiddlers...), verifies the checksum and runs it silently. As far as I know, it's all just wrappers on top of stuff that's always existed in Windows Installer. Is it simply the convenience of the chocolatey.org catalog and the ability to avoid visiting a bunch of websites looking for installers? I thought ninite.com had that cornered for most uses.

krisdol 9y ago
This is similar to how a lot of the homebrew cask packages work on OS X. Ninite appears to be more end-user/consumer focused while chocolatey aims for a wider swath of developer packages as well. Personally, I use neither because neither is open source. Instead, I use scoop: http://scoop.sh/ http://scoop.sh/
- nlawalker 9y ago
  Whoa, thanks. >> Looking for familiar Unix tools? Tired of Powershell’s Verb-Noun verbosity? Sold.
- lstamour 9y ago
  “Neither”? Yes, Ninite is closed, e.g. https://ninite.com/help/notfeatures/more.html https://ninite.com/help/notfeatures/more.html But alternatives aren’t: Chocolatey - Apache license - https://github.com/chocolatey/choco https://github.com/chocolatey/choco Homebrew (for Mac) - BSD license - https://github.com/Homebrew/brew https://github.com/Homebrew/brew Scoop (as previously mentioned) - Public Domain - https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop Comparing Scoop to Chocolatey: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Comparison https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Compari...
colemannugent 9y ago
People are excited to be rescued from the hell of searching the Internet for a program you want. One of the things that regularly blows the minds of people new to the Linux world is the ability to install anything you can remember the name of. While Chocolatey isn't quite there yet (it may never given the difficulty of working around Windows), but it is way better than installing 50 programs manually. Ninite is great for a small selection of apps, but it is not a package manager by any means. For quick setup, yeah it works, but you wouldn't rebuild the installer to install one program, you may as well download the program in the first place.
- nlawalker 9y ago
  >> Ninite is great for a small selection of apps, but it is not a package manager by any means. I guess this is the root of my question, how does Chocolatey "manage packages" above and beyond what Windows already does with Add/Remove Programs?
  - roryisok 9y ago
    Chocolatey allows you to chain together as many installs as you like, so you can essentially set up whatever apps you want on a system unattended. You could argue it's just a wrapper around the windows installer system but you could equally argue that npm is just a wrapper around javascript files.
  - moondev 9y ago
    Because you can easily automate the process and perform actions with the cli
  - DavidWoof 9y ago
    Chocolatey is scriptable, it handles the downloads, checks the checksums, it's easily searchable, etc. For various reasons I don't use it much anymore, but it's really convenient to go to a new machine after a rebuild and just run a standard script of choco install -y vim; choco install -y python # ...another 20 lines and I'm up and running with all my standard apps. Having to download all those apps, verify the checksums and go through the install wizard can easily take a couple of hours. It's especially useful if you're spinning up a lot of vms.
flukus 9y ago
choco upgrade all That's the biggest reason, it's easy to upgrade everything at once, not getting nagged but auto updaters when you want to actually use a program, not hunting around the web to check if there are uninstalled updates, etc. The other big convenience is as you said, having everything in a single catalog.
- anotherevan 9y ago
  This was going to be my response too. You can update your installed software fairly painlessly[1]. You can do that with Ninite too, but the range of software available with Chocolatey is larger. [1] Except for the occasional package or two that the maintainers don't keep up to date, which is a shame.
agumonkey 9y ago
That's not honest. - Ninite is not unattended, you have to use a gui. - Ninite doesn't have a lot of choice and not open to more. - All package managers only fetch a package, check some hash and run a simple installation process (it's 90% file copy) - It's enjoyable to most coders to be able to search for and install a package without browsing a website. - You can use chocolatey locally too, to automate provisioning in a way
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Also, I can reasonably trust that the community would flag any issues like getting a malwared version of software. It's sometimes not easy to find official sites for some software and the skeezy download.com style sites are always high on the search engine results.
petercooper 9y ago
I think you nailed it in your second to last sentence. It's not often I'm back in the Windows world, but when I am it feels like going back to the early 2000s.. ending up on very skeevy-looking sites trying to hunt the "Download" button that isn't a banner ad. Anything that can take that away is worth it.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  An add blocker will take away the banner ads part at least.
  - petercooper 9y ago
    Sure, but it's surprising how much Windows software still leans on "file download sites" that do the whole "your file will download in X seconds or click here" nonsense. It's sometimes hard to tell if it's the real/official download unless you backtrack. Very weird compared to Mac software where usually a .dmg is downloaded straight from the creator's own site.
emmelaich 9y ago
Also consider http://0install.net/ http://0install.net/ Should get a lot more interest IMNHO.

krisdol 9y ago

This is similar to how a lot of the homebrew cask packages work on OS X. Ninite appears to be more end-user/consumer focused while chocolatey aims for a wider swath of developer packages as well. Personally, I use neither because neither is open source. Instead, I use scoop: http://scoop.sh/ http://scoop.sh/

nlawalker 9y ago
Whoa, thanks. >> Looking for familiar Unix tools? Tired of Powershell’s Verb-Noun verbosity? Sold.
lstamour 9y ago
“Neither”? Yes, Ninite is closed, e.g. https://ninite.com/help/notfeatures/more.html https://ninite.com/help/notfeatures/more.html But alternatives aren’t: Chocolatey - Apache license - https://github.com/chocolatey/choco https://github.com/chocolatey/choco Homebrew (for Mac) - BSD license - https://github.com/Homebrew/brew https://github.com/Homebrew/brew Scoop (as previously mentioned) - Public Domain - https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop Comparing Scoop to Chocolatey: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Comparison https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Compari...

colemannugent 9y ago

People are excited to be rescued from the hell of searching the Internet for a program you want. One of the things that regularly blows the minds of people new to the Linux world is the ability to install anything you can remember the name of. While Chocolatey isn't quite there yet (it may never given the difficulty of working around Windows), but it is way better than installing 50 programs manually. Ninite is great for a small selection of apps, but it is not a package manager by any means. For quick setup, yeah it works, but you wouldn't rebuild the installer to install one program, you may as well download the program in the first place.

nlawalker 9y ago
>> Ninite is great for a small selection of apps, but it is not a package manager by any means. I guess this is the root of my question, how does Chocolatey "manage packages" above and beyond what Windows already does with Add/Remove Programs?
- roryisok 9y ago
  Chocolatey allows you to chain together as many installs as you like, so you can essentially set up whatever apps you want on a system unattended. You could argue it's just a wrapper around the windows installer system but you could equally argue that npm is just a wrapper around javascript files.
- moondev 9y ago
  Because you can easily automate the process and perform actions with the cli
- DavidWoof 9y ago
  Chocolatey is scriptable, it handles the downloads, checks the checksums, it's easily searchable, etc. For various reasons I don't use it much anymore, but it's really convenient to go to a new machine after a rebuild and just run a standard script of choco install -y vim; choco install -y python # ...another 20 lines and I'm up and running with all my standard apps. Having to download all those apps, verify the checksums and go through the install wizard can easily take a couple of hours. It's especially useful if you're spinning up a lot of vms.

flukus 9y ago

choco upgrade all That's the biggest reason, it's easy to upgrade everything at once, not getting nagged but auto updaters when you want to actually use a program, not hunting around the web to check if there are uninstalled updates, etc. The other big convenience is as you said, having everything in a single catalog.

anotherevan 9y ago
This was going to be my response too. You can update your installed software fairly painlessly[1]. You can do that with Ninite too, but the range of software available with Chocolatey is larger. [1] Except for the occasional package or two that the maintainers don't keep up to date, which is a shame.

agumonkey 9y ago

That's not honest. - Ninite is not unattended, you have to use a gui. - Ninite doesn't have a lot of choice and not open to more. - All package managers only fetch a package, check some hash and run a simple installation process (it's 90% file copy) - It's enjoyable to most coders to be able to search for and install a package without browsing a website. - You can use chocolatey locally too, to automate provisioning in a way

jjeaff 9y ago
Also, I can reasonably trust that the community would flag any issues like getting a malwared version of software. It's sometimes not easy to find official sites for some software and the skeezy download.com style sites are always high on the search engine results.

petercooper 9y ago

I think you nailed it in your second to last sentence. It's not often I'm back in the Windows world, but when I am it feels like going back to the early 2000s.. ending up on very skeevy-looking sites trying to hunt the "Download" button that isn't a banner ad. Anything that can take that away is worth it.

jjeaff 9y ago
An add blocker will take away the banner ads part at least.
- petercooper 9y ago
  Sure, but it's surprising how much Windows software still leans on "file download sites" that do the whole "your file will download in X seconds or click here" nonsense. It's sometimes hard to tell if it's the real/official download unless you backtrack. Very weird compared to Mac software where usually a .dmg is downloaded straight from the creator's own site.

emmelaich 9y ago

Also consider http://0install.net/ http://0install.net/ Should get a lot more interest IMNHO.