Windows package management

While I can't stand using Windows, for some task it's still required. One thing that I've discovered that makes using it a lot better are its various package managers.

Just like on Linux, package managers allow you to install, update and manage programs from the comfort of your terminal.

Scoop

My favourite package manager so far is scoop because it downloads packages to a local directory making it portable and usuable without admin privileges.

It supports a solid collection of packages and because the package format uses json, creating your packages isn't hard.

However, because of its portable nature, not all apps work as you might expect, in these cases I fallback to winget.

winget

Seeing the popularity of other package managers for Windows, Microsoft decided to rollout their own solution which is winget.

Being the official package manager, it's well intergrated into the system, allowing it manage all installed programs.

Chocolatey

Chocolatey was my package manager of choice for a long time, but I now see it more as bloatware. It sits between scoop and winget, being more complicated than scoop while not being able to manage system packages like winget.