10 ms·

PortableApps.com Hits 1 Billion App Downloads

249 points by JohnTHaller 5y ago

gompertz 5y ago
Great resource that I use off and on! However usually my first attempt on locked down machines will be trying to extract the MSI installer or installing exe with 7zip, to see if I can run the contents directly.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  If the .msi file isn't opened with 7z you can try a so called "administrative install", it extracts everything and works most if the time: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564619/what-is-the-purpose-of-administrative-installation-initiated-using-msiexec-a#5751980 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564619/what-is-the-purp...
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
Wonderful to see these guys still making headlines on here. Their packaged versions of software have come in handy a ton for me.
- FpUser 5y ago
  Same here
wlesieutre 5y ago
I used to carry a bunch of these around on a flash drive 15 years ago. Great to see they're still going!
charcircuit 5y ago
A big problem I have with this site is that there always seems to be Windows downloads. This makes the site useless to me.
- zymhan 5y ago
  Good luck finding actually portable linux software, unless it bakes in every dependency.
  - IceWreck 5y ago
    AppImages are portable, mostly. They run out of the box on Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and others.
  - maven29 5y ago
    AppImage does exactly that?
    - zymhan 5y ago
      Sure, in theory. I've had appimages that would only run on a specific Linux distro and version. It doesn't seem like an automatic fix.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Lots of software does that these days because it’s the standard way to distribute stuff in Go and Rust. So much software is just dependent on kernel and architecture. Terraform is a good example of a moderately complex piece of software distributed that way.
    - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
      Are you talking about statically-linked binaries?
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    You can just put the dependencies in the same folder in most cases.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      ...and then compile it. This site provides binaries.
41b696ef1113 5y ago
I still keep a collection of these on hand for locked down Windows machines where I am denied admin. Cannot install anything, but I retain the power to copy and run random binaries.
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  That's where they really shine. I did the same when I had to get stuff done on absolutely ancient bog-standard Dell Windows machines a while back. I think they had IE 10, no PDF reader, no office software, no media player. I was supposed to do regular office work with that setup (weird situation). One visit to Portable Apps and my hours spent in the office were so much better. I still use the site for fun or for simple utility value even in Linux sometimes.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  > but I retain the power to copy and run random binaries. This is seen as bad practice and is on its way out. Many companies are implementing IT policies that prevent all binaries from running unless the source is a privileged location (e.g. program files) or it’s signed by Microsoft’s private key (and this is only because Teams for some idiotic reason is still installed in appdata against all best practices and MS own explicit guidance.)
  - RMPR 5y ago
    > (and this is only because Teams for some idiotic reason is still installed in appdata against all best practices and MS own explicit guidance.) Maybe it's because the Teams Desktop client is a rebranding of Skype's[0]. I guess it's easier said than done in their case. 0: At least on Linux for whatever reason the temp folder of Teams is called Skype, when the system notifies you, it goes along the lines of "Skype is using your Microphone"
    - whyoh 5y ago
      >Maybe it's because the Teams Desktop client is a rebranding of Skype's I think it's just because that's the default behavior for Electron apps and they're too lazy to change it. IIRC, VSCode had the same problem, but they fixed it eventually.
gluxon 5y ago
PortableApps.com is where I started programming back when I was 11 years old in 2008. The community completely changed my life. I learned a lot about writing software on forums and the IRC channel from numerous people that were just willing to give advice to a stranger. I'm glad this community is still alive. I proudly say my first programming language is NSIS. (The Windows scripting language most wrappers on the site are written in.) Thank you John.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  IIRC, NSIS is Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, which is just another priceless gem came out of original Nullsoft team. It's the Winamp of windows installation systems in my eyes.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  My first job circa 2004 was writing an NSIS installer for a long-gone startup in the East Midlands, UK. It was not my first language, but I very much enjoyed it.
- rmccue 5y ago
  Oh hey, same :) Congrats John!
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    Thanks, Ryan! I hope life is treating you well!
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  … and I proudly say that I saved another generation from having to wrangle with NSIS, and all the copying and pasting of obscure and buggy code that was endemic, by writing the PortableApps.com Launcher! (I’d probably write the PortableApps.com Launcher in Rust these days, though you’d have to be careful to avoid things like bringing in Unicode tables, and put more effort than usual into shrinking things. Rust has been my favourite language since 2014 now. But I would consider Zig seriously too, though I’m not familiar with it or its Windows API interop. But as with almost all of the developers connected with the PortableApps.com project, once I got a bit older I seldom or never needed it, having a computer of my own, and so drifted away at last.)
notRobot 5y ago
These were a lifesaver for me in school! I had so much fun with them :)
sp8 5y ago
Massive, MASSIVE fan of John and his work. I use a set of apps at home and at work, not because I can't install stuff but for convenience. Things like the auto-prompt for updates are a blessing when installing stuff on non-technical family member's computers. That's reminded me, I've been meaning to go and donate, they deserve some of my money.
account-5 5y ago
I have been using these on Windows along with Autohotkey for a long time. Back then having a set of programs that are set up how I like them that are the same on whatever windows os I was using that were self updating was game changing, and still is really on Windows. Now having a set of programs windows can't easily spy on, serve ads into, and take "diagnostics" from is the upside. Like autohotkey this suite makes windows usable for me. I mostly use Linux but if windows has anything on Linux is portable apps.
teetertater 5y ago
PortableApps is awesome. Any AssaultCube fans here? This was the only game I played for years, became one of the top players! Not that that was hard, since there aren't so many of them at any given time
- hamolton 5y ago
  I played that game a ton, but was always bad. It, along with Halo, were two games I could put on a USB stick to play on school computers. Both were great for poor hardware.
  - teetertater 5y ago
    Haha glad to find someone! That was one of the main reason I got into it. Our school blocked the main serverlist but one server still somehow got through, so we could have secret lan parties in computer labs
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  It's still kicking. They released a 1.3 "Lockdown Edition" just this month: https://portableapps.com/apps/games/assaultcube_portable https://portableapps.com/apps/games/assaultcube_portable
  - teetertater 5y ago
    Woah the first update in years. Glad to see it! Very sad about haxjump being gone, flying around the map is the main reason I played
alias_neo 5y ago
I remember PortableApps.com fondly from my childhood, I spent days building and customising USB sticks with auto-launching menus and all of the tools and utilities I could ever need. Getting a bigger USB stick was always fun as I could put more stuff on there. I used to enjoy just browsing the app list to find out about new software I'd never heard of. Having not run Windows for most of my adult life, I haven't used it or even remembered it exists for a long time, I'm glad to see it's still doing well.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Similar story here. I also feel as though PortableApps was the catalyst that pushed me to look into open source software, and Linux.
- iszomer 5y ago
  I still remember downloading them onto a 3.5" floppy then onto a 100MB Zip for use on Windows 95. Fond memories of tinyapps.org and analogx.com back in those days.
  - alias_neo 5y ago
    I never touched ZIP drives, went straight from floppies to USB sticks and CDs, I think I remember first using floppies to "upgrade" my Olivetti PC from DOS to Windows 3.1, was several diskettes, mid to late 90s perhaps? I was single-digit years old at the time.
- spongeb00b 5y ago
  I enjoyed that too. Mac user at home, but school only had Windows 2000 PCs with IE5, Office and not much else. Meanwhile I carried around my USB drive with Firefox (tabs and bookmarks!!) and Open Office so I could then edit the same docs on my Mac at home. I was always in fear of one day the IT dept figuring out how to block it.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  Glad it helped you out in your youth. You can still play around with it under Wine if you're a Linux user. And I'm prepping a Mac package with a Wine variant.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
"Portable" applications are, in my opinion, the absolute best way to distribute applications. They act like ye-olde desktop applications from the 80s and 90s where everything was a single self-contained object, meaning that application management was identical to regular file management. Copy them to new media to 'install', delete them to 'uninstall', run them from file shares, CDs, or USB sticks, keep them organized in folders however you want, and have multiple versions of the same application without any fancy management tools, gigantic dependency resolution databases, or third party middlemen painstakingly integrating everything. Sadly, the world has moved away from this kind of simplicity.
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  Best way to distribute, but probably the worst way to maintain and update. A critical vulnerability in a widely used library, and everyone is screwed.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    1) If a library is that widely used it should be part of the base OS. Widget toolkits, networking, cryptography, OS management/interface, etc. Anything else is used by such a vanishingly small number of programs it probably isn't worth considering anyway. See: https://drewdevault.com/dynlib https://drewdevault.com/dynlib. 2) We have sandboxing these days, and I contend that all applications should be sandboxed by default anyway. Mobile got this right (idea, not implementation per-se) and it is high time desktops caught up. 3) Nothing stops anyone from using a repo of portable applications and managing them with a tool, it just opens up the option to not have to do that. Updating isn't that hard. Searching for applications and connecting to a URL specified in their manifest file to download an update diff (one of many ways to do it) is a trivial task for modern computers. Yes, it's a tradeoff compared to repos and package management, but I personally think the upsides more than outweigh the relatively small downsides. Simplicity > complexity where complexity is unnecessary, and I contend that the complexity of package management schemes is unnecessary.
- oreilles 5y ago
  This is why I love macOS so much. Every application is in /Applications. "Installation" isn't even something. 99% of the time, drag&dropping an app in this folder is all you need to do. If I want to delete an app, I go there, ⌘ + ⌫ it and it's done. Updaters just works and the new version just replaces the old one. Application data is almost always in ~/Library/Application Support/Application so I don't have anything else to do. I was flabbergasted the last time I had to clean up a Windows computer to see how convoluted software update and removal is. You need to go to a specific windows preference pane to be able to uninstall an app, and even then most apps have a specific software to uninstall them, which sometimes needs to be downloaded separately. If you want to uninstall two apps at the same time, you can't. Upgrading an app generally involve manually navigating to the app's website, downloading the latest version, install it somewhere it doesn't interfere with the previous version, then deleting the previous app folder, then praying for windows to be able to link its search results to the correct ones after that process. It's baffling the very feature why operating systems exists in the first place (managing applications) still isn't solve more than 40 years after the first windows release.
indigodaddy 5y ago
I wonder if the way Scoop installs stuff was inspired by PortableApps?
- rashil2000 5y ago
  Scoop for the most part just extracts the archive/installer. Whether the application is portable is ultimately decided by that installer. That said, we do highly prefer portable versions of applications, due to the portable nature of Scoop itself.
  - indigodaddy 5y ago
    Good info thanks!
temp8964 5y ago
I had a PortableApps setup on my USB hard drive when I was in college. With this setup, I didn't need a laptop. I can use any Windows desktop in computer labs or libraries. Super convenient. I always dislike the small screen and keyboard on laptops, so it was very helpful. And I put the USB drive in my backpack, only took out the cable when using it. So I never lose it or damage it. I ran Firefox, Notepad++, XAMPP, R and RStudio from the USB drive. At that time, Dropbox was new and there were hacks to run Dropbox on USB drives.
disadvantage 5y ago
I use the Firefox portable app quite heavily. I like to separate my browsing into different buckets for different things. Yeah I know Firefox allows you to do this with containers, but having a dedicated profile is better and it's difficult to confuse what context you are in. Then there's Firefox profiles, which is another way to divide up your browsing (which I use) but not as much as having dedicated portable Firefoxes I can use for different things. Over the years of using Firefox portable, I noticed that sometimes the update broke, since a whole new engine was created by Mozilla and the update wasn't graceful. But nevermind, I simply downloaded the latest version from Portableapps, and copied over the profile directory and I was good. I even have copies of old portable versions of Firefox like v56 that I use to test sites in, just incase my users are using some legacy version / old versions of Palemoon (for whatever reason).
- lewantmontreal 5y ago
  I use Firefox for everyday generic browsing, and Chrome for specific buckets. Chrome profiles are soo good and easy to use compared to Firefox profiles or containers. I’ll definitely look into portable Firefoxes for buckets.
  - disadvantage 5y ago
    Isn't Chrome a privacy issue though? I inspected the traffic with Wireshark and saw loads of requests to Google. Then lately there is news about their upcoming extension Manifest stopping the ability to use uBlock and other privacy extensions, so I want to avoid Chrome. Heard good things about 'Ungoogled Chromium' however (you should check it out!)
- timetraveller26 5y ago
  You can also have different profiles in Firefox, you can launch the Profile Manager with firefox -P. I do this setting different skins for my profiles.
  - disadvantage 5y ago
    Yeah I do this too. You can also navigate to `about:profiles` in the address bar and launch a profile of your choosing. In the end there's many ways to slice and dice different profile buckets. I use a combination of containers, profiles, and portable browsers. The beauty of portable browsers is you can 'clone' them so you don't have to configure new profiles. All your settings can be configured once, and copied to a clone portable browser which you use for a different context. BTW: Love the idea of using different themes/skins for different contexts :)
qwerty456127 5y ago
I mostly preferred to use portables even on my PC, not just on USB sticks. The idea of having the whole app including its settings and data contained in a single directory (on a dedicated partition, keeping the system registry clean and surviving full-format OS re-installations, also usable from multiple OSes) is very appealing. The selection of apps PortableApps.com offers also is amazing - I have found out many great apps and games just from there.

249 points by JohnTHaller 5y ago

Great resource that I use off and on! However usually my first attempt on locked down machines will be trying to extract the MSI installer or installing exe with 7zip, to see if I can run the contents directly.

justsomehnguy 5y ago
If the .msi file isn't opened with 7z you can try a so called "administrative install", it extracts everything and works most if the time: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564619/what-is-the-purpose-of-administrative-installation-initiated-using-msiexec-a#5751980 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564619/what-is-the-purp...

gogopuppygogo 5y ago

Wonderful to see these guys still making headlines on here. Their packaged versions of software have come in handy a ton for me.

FpUser 5y ago
Same here

wlesieutre 5y ago

I used to carry a bunch of these around on a flash drive 15 years ago. Great to see they're still going!

charcircuit 5y ago

A big problem I have with this site is that there always seems to be Windows downloads. This makes the site useless to me.

zymhan 5y ago
Good luck finding actually portable linux software, unless it bakes in every dependency.
- IceWreck 5y ago
  AppImages are portable, mostly. They run out of the box on Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and others.
- maven29 5y ago
  AppImage does exactly that?
  - zymhan 5y ago
    Sure, in theory. I've had appimages that would only run on a specific Linux distro and version. It doesn't seem like an automatic fix.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Lots of software does that these days because it’s the standard way to distribute stuff in Go and Rust. So much software is just dependent on kernel and architecture. Terraform is a good example of a moderately complex piece of software distributed that way.
  - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
    Are you talking about statically-linked binaries?
- charcircuit 5y ago
  You can just put the dependencies in the same folder in most cases.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    ...and then compile it. This site provides binaries.

41b696ef1113 5y ago

I still keep a collection of these on hand for locked down Windows machines where I am denied admin. Cannot install anything, but I retain the power to copy and run random binaries.

themodelplumber 5y ago
That's where they really shine. I did the same when I had to get stuff done on absolutely ancient bog-standard Dell Windows machines a while back. I think they had IE 10, no PDF reader, no office software, no media player. I was supposed to do regular office work with that setup (weird situation). One visit to Portable Apps and my hours spent in the office were so much better. I still use the site for fun or for simple utility value even in Linux sometimes.
vxNsr 5y ago
> but I retain the power to copy and run random binaries. This is seen as bad practice and is on its way out. Many companies are implementing IT policies that prevent all binaries from running unless the source is a privileged location (e.g. program files) or it’s signed by Microsoft’s private key (and this is only because Teams for some idiotic reason is still installed in appdata against all best practices and MS own explicit guidance.)
- RMPR 5y ago
  > (and this is only because Teams for some idiotic reason is still installed in appdata against all best practices and MS own explicit guidance.) Maybe it's because the Teams Desktop client is a rebranding of Skype's[0]. I guess it's easier said than done in their case. 0: At least on Linux for whatever reason the temp folder of Teams is called Skype, when the system notifies you, it goes along the lines of "Skype is using your Microphone"
  - whyoh 5y ago
    >Maybe it's because the Teams Desktop client is a rebranding of Skype's I think it's just because that's the default behavior for Electron apps and they're too lazy to change it. IIRC, VSCode had the same problem, but they fixed it eventually.

gluxon 5y ago

PortableApps.com is where I started programming back when I was 11 years old in 2008. The community completely changed my life. I learned a lot about writing software on forums and the IRC channel from numerous people that were just willing to give advice to a stranger. I'm glad this community is still alive. I proudly say my first programming language is NSIS. (The Windows scripting language most wrappers on the site are written in.) Thank you John.

bayindirh 5y ago
IIRC, NSIS is Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, which is just another priceless gem came out of original Nullsoft team. It's the Winamp of windows installation systems in my eyes.
robertlagrant 5y ago
My first job circa 2004 was writing an NSIS installer for a long-gone startup in the East Midlands, UK. It was not my first language, but I very much enjoyed it.
rmccue 5y ago
Oh hey, same :) Congrats John!
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  Thanks, Ryan! I hope life is treating you well!
chrismorgan 5y ago
… and I proudly say that I saved another generation from having to wrangle with NSIS, and all the copying and pasting of obscure and buggy code that was endemic, by writing the PortableApps.com Launcher! (I’d probably write the PortableApps.com Launcher in Rust these days, though you’d have to be careful to avoid things like bringing in Unicode tables, and put more effort than usual into shrinking things. Rust has been my favourite language since 2014 now. But I would consider Zig seriously too, though I’m not familiar with it or its Windows API interop. But as with almost all of the developers connected with the PortableApps.com project, once I got a bit older I seldom or never needed it, having a computer of my own, and so drifted away at last.)

notRobot 5y ago

These were a lifesaver for me in school! I had so much fun with them :)

sp8 5y ago

Massive, MASSIVE fan of John and his work. I use a set of apps at home and at work, not because I can't install stuff but for convenience. Things like the auto-prompt for updates are a blessing when installing stuff on non-technical family member's computers. That's reminded me, I've been meaning to go and donate, they deserve some of my money.

account-5 5y ago

I have been using these on Windows along with Autohotkey for a long time. Back then having a set of programs that are set up how I like them that are the same on whatever windows os I was using that were self updating was game changing, and still is really on Windows. Now having a set of programs windows can't easily spy on, serve ads into, and take "diagnostics" from is the upside. Like autohotkey this suite makes windows usable for me. I mostly use Linux but if windows has anything on Linux is portable apps.

teetertater 5y ago

PortableApps is awesome. Any AssaultCube fans here? This was the only game I played for years, became one of the top players! Not that that was hard, since there aren't so many of them at any given time

hamolton 5y ago
I played that game a ton, but was always bad. It, along with Halo, were two games I could put on a USB stick to play on school computers. Both were great for poor hardware.
- teetertater 5y ago
  Haha glad to find someone! That was one of the main reason I got into it. Our school blocked the main serverlist but one server still somehow got through, so we could have secret lan parties in computer labs
JohnTHaller 5y ago
It's still kicking. They released a 1.3 "Lockdown Edition" just this month: https://portableapps.com/apps/games/assaultcube_portable https://portableapps.com/apps/games/assaultcube_portable
- teetertater 5y ago
  Woah the first update in years. Glad to see it! Very sad about haxjump being gone, flying around the map is the main reason I played

alias_neo 5y ago

I remember PortableApps.com fondly from my childhood, I spent days building and customising USB sticks with auto-launching menus and all of the tools and utilities I could ever need. Getting a bigger USB stick was always fun as I could put more stuff on there. I used to enjoy just browsing the app list to find out about new software I'd never heard of. Having not run Windows for most of my adult life, I haven't used it or even remembered it exists for a long time, I'm glad to see it's still doing well.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Similar story here. I also feel as though PortableApps was the catalyst that pushed me to look into open source software, and Linux.
iszomer 5y ago
I still remember downloading them onto a 3.5" floppy then onto a 100MB Zip for use on Windows 95. Fond memories of tinyapps.org and analogx.com back in those days.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  I never touched ZIP drives, went straight from floppies to USB sticks and CDs, I think I remember first using floppies to "upgrade" my Olivetti PC from DOS to Windows 3.1, was several diskettes, mid to late 90s perhaps? I was single-digit years old at the time.
spongeb00b 5y ago
I enjoyed that too. Mac user at home, but school only had Windows 2000 PCs with IE5, Office and not much else. Meanwhile I carried around my USB drive with Firefox (tabs and bookmarks!!) and Open Office so I could then edit the same docs on my Mac at home. I was always in fear of one day the IT dept figuring out how to block it.
JohnTHaller 5y ago
Glad it helped you out in your youth. You can still play around with it under Wine if you're a Linux user. And I'm prepping a Mac package with a Wine variant.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

"Portable" applications are, in my opinion, the absolute best way to distribute applications. They act like ye-olde desktop applications from the 80s and 90s where everything was a single self-contained object, meaning that application management was identical to regular file management. Copy them to new media to 'install', delete them to 'uninstall', run them from file shares, CDs, or USB sticks, keep them organized in folders however you want, and have multiple versions of the same application without any fancy management tools, gigantic dependency resolution databases, or third party middlemen painstakingly integrating everything. Sadly, the world has moved away from this kind of simplicity.

ComodoHacker 5y ago
Best way to distribute, but probably the worst way to maintain and update. A critical vulnerability in a widely used library, and everyone is screwed.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  1) If a library is that widely used it should be part of the base OS. Widget toolkits, networking, cryptography, OS management/interface, etc. Anything else is used by such a vanishingly small number of programs it probably isn't worth considering anyway. See: https://drewdevault.com/dynlib https://drewdevault.com/dynlib. 2) We have sandboxing these days, and I contend that all applications should be sandboxed by default anyway. Mobile got this right (idea, not implementation per-se) and it is high time desktops caught up. 3) Nothing stops anyone from using a repo of portable applications and managing them with a tool, it just opens up the option to not have to do that. Updating isn't that hard. Searching for applications and connecting to a URL specified in their manifest file to download an update diff (one of many ways to do it) is a trivial task for modern computers. Yes, it's a tradeoff compared to repos and package management, but I personally think the upsides more than outweigh the relatively small downsides. Simplicity > complexity where complexity is unnecessary, and I contend that the complexity of package management schemes is unnecessary.
oreilles 5y ago
This is why I love macOS so much. Every application is in /Applications. "Installation" isn't even something. 99% of the time, drag&dropping an app in this folder is all you need to do. If I want to delete an app, I go there, ⌘ + ⌫ it and it's done. Updaters just works and the new version just replaces the old one. Application data is almost always in ~/Library/Application Support/Application so I don't have anything else to do. I was flabbergasted the last time I had to clean up a Windows computer to see how convoluted software update and removal is. You need to go to a specific windows preference pane to be able to uninstall an app, and even then most apps have a specific software to uninstall them, which sometimes needs to be downloaded separately. If you want to uninstall two apps at the same time, you can't. Upgrading an app generally involve manually navigating to the app's website, downloading the latest version, install it somewhere it doesn't interfere with the previous version, then deleting the previous app folder, then praying for windows to be able to link its search results to the correct ones after that process. It's baffling the very feature why operating systems exists in the first place (managing applications) still isn't solve more than 40 years after the first windows release.

indigodaddy 5y ago

I wonder if the way Scoop installs stuff was inspired by PortableApps?

rashil2000 5y ago
Scoop for the most part just extracts the archive/installer. Whether the application is portable is ultimately decided by that installer. That said, we do highly prefer portable versions of applications, due to the portable nature of Scoop itself.
- indigodaddy 5y ago
  Good info thanks!

temp8964 5y ago

I had a PortableApps setup on my USB hard drive when I was in college. With this setup, I didn't need a laptop. I can use any Windows desktop in computer labs or libraries. Super convenient. I always dislike the small screen and keyboard on laptops, so it was very helpful. And I put the USB drive in my backpack, only took out the cable when using it. So I never lose it or damage it. I ran Firefox, Notepad++, XAMPP, R and RStudio from the USB drive. At that time, Dropbox was new and there were hacks to run Dropbox on USB drives.

disadvantage 5y ago

I use the Firefox portable app quite heavily. I like to separate my browsing into different buckets for different things. Yeah I know Firefox allows you to do this with containers, but having a dedicated profile is better and it's difficult to confuse what context you are in. Then there's Firefox profiles, which is another way to divide up your browsing (which I use) but not as much as having dedicated portable Firefoxes I can use for different things. Over the years of using Firefox portable, I noticed that sometimes the update broke, since a whole new engine was created by Mozilla and the update wasn't graceful. But nevermind, I simply downloaded the latest version from Portableapps, and copied over the profile directory and I was good. I even have copies of old portable versions of Firefox like v56 that I use to test sites in, just incase my users are using some legacy version / old versions of Palemoon (for whatever reason).

lewantmontreal 5y ago
I use Firefox for everyday generic browsing, and Chrome for specific buckets. Chrome profiles are soo good and easy to use compared to Firefox profiles or containers. I’ll definitely look into portable Firefoxes for buckets.
- disadvantage 5y ago
  Isn't Chrome a privacy issue though? I inspected the traffic with Wireshark and saw loads of requests to Google. Then lately there is news about their upcoming extension Manifest stopping the ability to use uBlock and other privacy extensions, so I want to avoid Chrome. Heard good things about 'Ungoogled Chromium' however (you should check it out!)
timetraveller26 5y ago
You can also have different profiles in Firefox, you can launch the Profile Manager with firefox -P. I do this setting different skins for my profiles.
- disadvantage 5y ago
  Yeah I do this too. You can also navigate to `about:profiles` in the address bar and launch a profile of your choosing. In the end there's many ways to slice and dice different profile buckets. I use a combination of containers, profiles, and portable browsers. The beauty of portable browsers is you can 'clone' them so you don't have to configure new profiles. All your settings can be configured once, and copied to a clone portable browser which you use for a different context. BTW: Love the idea of using different themes/skins for different contexts :)

qwerty456127 5y ago

I mostly preferred to use portables even on my PC, not just on USB sticks. The idea of having the whole app including its settings and data contained in a single directory (on a dedicated partition, keeping the system registry clean and surviving full-format OS re-installations, also usable from multiple OSes) is very appealing. The selection of apps PortableApps.com offers also is amazing - I have found out many great apps and games just from there.