Windows Package Managment?

By Andrew Miller in Reader

Posted in Linux on December 15, 2008 at 5:32 pm

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I feel a little cheeky posting about this today, as simultaneously I saw this post suggesting that Windows needs package management. This is something I’ve thought for a while, so I thought I’d tackle the topic too.

So if you’ve not used one of the many Linux distributions, almost all of the big players use a package management system - Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu tend to use Aptitude/Synaptics and Fedora uses Yum. I personally don’t get on with Yum and it was one of the big reasons I moved away from Fedora ( used it from Core 3 to 8 ) to Ubuntu. But whatever you use - the function is the same - a singular database of most of the software available for your distribution. The software and its dependencies are but a few clicks away. Searching Synaptics for “photo editor” will bring up, amongst other things, GIMP. Very handy as the name isn’t exactly self explanatory. Let’s face it - “that photo has been GIMPed” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Photoshopped”.

Anyway - after selecting what you want, everything is downloaded, installed to your machine and you’re ready to start GIMPing. All the packages are signed and coming from a trusted source - so know that what you’re getting is the real deal. Realistically, using Synaptics you can hunt down and find a piece of software to do pretty much everything want. Not everything is in there, but then you can always go and hunt around SourceForge and compile from source or get the latest and greatest from GetDeb.

On Windows, the situation is very different as the only real option you have is to turn to your search engine of choice. I remember looking for a simple application to mass rename files not too long ago and Google is chocker with applications all promising to do exactly that. Most of them were filled with spyware, requesting money or just not doing what they said. I consider myself pretty good at Googling and I eventually found something - but not everyone is quite as good as separating wheat from chaff. I’ve had friends who have installed all sorts of things that I wouldn’t let anywhere near my PC.

Microsoft is very quick to blame third parties for Windows’ woes and frankly, it’s not a bad claim to make. There are a hell of a lot of supposed programmers out there, producing an awful lot of crap - crap that people need protecting from.

Okay - so Apple App Store anyone? Sure. That’s a great example of how package management really works well. Google and RIM obviously thinks it’s a model that works well too, as they are doing the same with the G1 and Storm. The biggest issue with the Apple Store is not so much that you have to pay to have your software included in the listing (although that is an issue) - it’s more the fact that it’s vetted by Steve Jobs himself which slows things down and makes it rather elitist. For something like this to work properly - it needs to be community driven. It doesn’t take long for a few humans to realise a piece of software is a piece of s**t and mark it accordingly.

I imagine I’m not the only person to have thought this and there must be websites out there with recommended listings of free software available for Windows. Feel free to comment with your advice, thoughts and links

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