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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

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.
- ChristianGeek 9y ago
  The biggest advantage for me is that it gives me a place to check once a week for program updates and handle all updates with one click.
- wink 9y ago
  Just using a cli command to check for upgrades and apply them is it worth for me for some apps. As not everything is supported, this is only half a solution, but every bit helps. Also, as a maintainer of one package[0] - although it's for developers, apparently sometimes there are problems installing the software on Windows and so it's a bit of effort every release and we can make at least a few users happy. [0]: https://chocolatey.org/packages/Lein/ https://chocolatey.org/packages/Lein/
WorldMaker 9y ago
At this point if you are going to the effort of custom installers as with Ninite you might as well switch to building APPX containers (with the Desktop Bridge) and use the Windows Store (and/or Windows Store for Business and/or Add-AppxPackage PowerShell automation). Personally, I think it's time to converge to APPX and away from semi-proprietary solutions like Chocolatey/Ninite/etc for desktop applications. (I say that as having once been a big Chocolatey fan.)
- slrz 9y ago
  Is there portable open source tooling to create these packages, like there is for MSI? Can programs installed through Appx packages do everything you can do as a Windows app or is there some form of mandatory sandboxing that would prevent its use for e.g. installing services or setting up credential providers?
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    The APPX format itself is quite a lot simpler than MSI (APPX is a .ZIP file with a manifest XML file, and typically a code signature), and most major installer project systems that can build an MSI can build an APPX already (including a plugin for the open source WiX toolset and recent versions of many of the most used commercial options). APPX still encourages UWP apps, but the Desktop Bridge exists for Win32 Desktop applications. For Win32 Desktop applications there is still a small sandbox, but think of it along the lines of "Docker container". The container is there mostly to make install/uninstall clean and reproducible. Win32 applications are otherwise "full privilege" applications to the APIs they used before. The Desktop Bridge stuff itself is partly open source, but definitely not portable, you can download the Desktop App Converter for free on Windows 10 [directly from the Windows Store] and it will Docker-esque use mini-Windows containers to run an existing EXE/MSI install and try to capture what it installs into an APPX package. I don't think it currently supports installing Win32 services directly, and it definitely doesn't support things like kernel drivers. The focus is mostly on desktop applications. UWP has a powerful background task model that is powerful enough to replace many uses of Win32 Windows services for desktop application needs, and the Desktop Bridge GitHub has samples of communicating between Win32 and UWP pieces. The full Win32 Office suite has been on the Windows Store in Preview for a couple months now, and it seems pretty clear to me that if Office can be bundled entirely in APPX than most other desktop applications don't have much excuse left.

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.
ChristianGeek 9y ago
The biggest advantage for me is that it gives me a place to check once a week for program updates and handle all updates with one click.
wink 9y ago
Just using a cli command to check for upgrades and apply them is it worth for me for some apps. As not everything is supported, this is only half a solution, but every bit helps. Also, as a maintainer of one package[0] - although it's for developers, apparently sometimes there are problems installing the software on Windows and so it's a bit of effort every release and we can make at least a few users happy. [0]: https://chocolatey.org/packages/Lein/ https://chocolatey.org/packages/Lein/

WorldMaker 9y ago

At this point if you are going to the effort of custom installers as with Ninite you might as well switch to building APPX containers (with the Desktop Bridge) and use the Windows Store (and/or Windows Store for Business and/or Add-AppxPackage PowerShell automation). Personally, I think it's time to converge to APPX and away from semi-proprietary solutions like Chocolatey/Ninite/etc for desktop applications. (I say that as having once been a big Chocolatey fan.)

slrz 9y ago
Is there portable open source tooling to create these packages, like there is for MSI? Can programs installed through Appx packages do everything you can do as a Windows app or is there some form of mandatory sandboxing that would prevent its use for e.g. installing services or setting up credential providers?
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  The APPX format itself is quite a lot simpler than MSI (APPX is a .ZIP file with a manifest XML file, and typically a code signature), and most major installer project systems that can build an MSI can build an APPX already (including a plugin for the open source WiX toolset and recent versions of many of the most used commercial options). APPX still encourages UWP apps, but the Desktop Bridge exists for Win32 Desktop applications. For Win32 Desktop applications there is still a small sandbox, but think of it along the lines of "Docker container". The container is there mostly to make install/uninstall clean and reproducible. Win32 applications are otherwise "full privilege" applications to the APIs they used before. The Desktop Bridge stuff itself is partly open source, but definitely not portable, you can download the Desktop App Converter for free on Windows 10 [directly from the Windows Store] and it will Docker-esque use mini-Windows containers to run an existing EXE/MSI install and try to capture what it installs into an APPX package. I don't think it currently supports installing Win32 services directly, and it definitely doesn't support things like kernel drivers. The focus is mostly on desktop applications. UWP has a powerful background task model that is powerful enough to replace many uses of Win32 Windows services for desktop application needs, and the Desktop Bridge GitHub has samples of communicating between Win32 and UWP pieces. The full Win32 Office suite has been on the Windows Store in Preview for a couple months now, and it seems pretty clear to me that if Office can be bundled entirely in APPX than most other desktop applications don't have much excuse left.