Microsoft Releases WinGet 1.4 For Improving Its Open-Source Package Manager

[WereCatf]

I, for one, VERY much love Winget. It is hands-down the best way of installing and updating software under Windows nowadays and after I forcibly introduced it to my husband as well, he's now enjoying it as well. It's not perfect and it is lacking in some ways compared to the Linux-world's tools, but it is still very much useable and handy.

There's just two things I always do on a fresh install: disable the MSStore-repo for Winget and then install WingetUI, so I get a nice, clean mouse-driven UI for it. The MSStore-repo has a tendency of screwing things up, if it's not disabled, but after that, Winget is just wonderful.

[WereCatf]

I don't see a reason to winget exist.

Yes, you do; you're just being facetious. The reason is the same as under Linux or any other OS with similar tools. Winget not being quite as good as e.g. apt doesn't make it useless or mean it doesn't have a justification for its existence.

[WereCatf]

Likely boasting they are coding something command line orientated, then make it sucky (feels good bug does nothing productive), continuing forced use of the standard click-n-pray graphical windows update. Or should I say, forced automated upgrades, when one wants use of the computer, the computer wants to stall during upgrades then reboot, shutdown and endlessly hangs.

Ignoring your chidlish diatribe, Winget doesn't install Windows-updates, so that part is just simply wrong. Winget is for managing installed applications, not Windows itself.

[ayumu]

If anyone here's familiar with both: How does winget compare to chocolatey? (I use chocolatey)

[WereCatf]

If anyone here's familiar with both: How does winget compare to chocolatey? (I use chocolatey)

I haven't used Chocolatey in quite a while now, so I am totally not up-to-date on it, but I suppose there isn't that much of a difference, if you just install/uninstall/update stuff with it. Winget has the benefit of simply being a part of Windows -- on Windows 10, it comes with an update to the Microsoft Store and on 11, it just is there from the get-go -- and as such is somewhat less likely to break and it's just more convenient that way.

If you don't care about Winget being a part of Windows, then it's probably mostly down to one's tastes which one to use. That said, I, personally, find WingetUI great and last time I checked, there wasn't any good mouse-driven GUI for Chocolatey, so I'd count that as an another benefit in favour of Winget.

[jKicker]

I use this on Windows since it's first release on. It's not Arch's pacman but it's definitely solving most of my needs in a straightforward way and I'm definitely happy they are going in this direction.

[rabcor]

Can it be used to install shit from the microsoft store without installing the stupid microsoft store? cuz that'd make htis actually good.

[evert_mouw]

The article is about something from Microsoft, so the dumbass responses aren't surprising. Winget isn't as good as Linux package managers. But it's about a million percent less crappy than having to go to dozens of different websites and manually download installers. It's a fantastic improvement for setting up new Windows machines easily via script without going all the way to a configuration / deployment management tool. Even when it was first released it probably had over 70% of the software I use all the time.

Firefox? All the Chromium forks you can handle? Irfanview? XNViewMP? Gimp? Foobar2000? Multi Commander and Double Commander? SMPlayer? CPU-Z and GPU-Z? CrystalDiskMark? Notepad++? All the Unigine benchmarks? Joplin Notes? KeePass?

All that shit and truckloads more is now easily installable via command line / scripting. And you can update all of it with a single command too.

But herp derp, Microsoft.

You don't read the other comments, do you?

WinGet sucks compared to other package managers available on Windows.

Scoop and Chocolatey are good examples. Then there is/was NuGet, Npackd, Ninite, and others. WinGet only got an uninstall command in 2021 and is still struggling feature-wise. Which is surprising given that Microsoft, the guys creating Windows, are responsible for WinGet and are starting to include it with their OS. Now that's a method to discourage the competition, but not based on offering something better.

[WereCatf]

WinGet sucks compared to other package managers available on Windows.

Specifics, please. In what way does it suck compared to the other ones?

[evert_mouw]

Specifics, please. In what way does it suck compared to the other ones?

Try reading.
Scroll back to my first comment.
Click on the link.