I've recently started using Chocolatey. While the thought of a package manager for Windows has crossed my mind (oh, my long gone Linux fanboy days), I always relegated it to something that would be too hard to maintain and work with.
For anyone who hasn't used a package manager, here's what makes it better than the classic install/uninstall babble.
- The endless cycle of "Go to website, navigate to download link, wait, double click, click next, uncheck the 'install malware option', press next 2 more times, wait again, press finish" is gone.
- Update ALL your software with no user input
- Got a new machine? Run a single-line command and all your favourite programs are now installed.
- A lot less annoying popups saying an update is available
- I think avoiding Adobe Flash updates deserves an entire bullet point.
So how does it work? Suppose you want to install git and Flash. Easy, launch the command line as an administrator and run this command.
Firefox's giving you warnings that your version of Flash is unsafe?
choco install Git flashplayerplugin -yAfter some time both Git and flash will be installed.
Firefox's giving you warnings that your version of Flash is unsafe?
Now both flash and Git are up to date with (nearly) no user input.
choco upgrade all -y