
Windows 10 will come with a command-line package manager - Systemic33
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/192950-windows-10-will-come-with-a-command-line-package-manager-much-to-the-lament-of-linux-users
======
alkonaut
Having a package manager is one thing, having a good curated repo of packages
is another. I doubt MS Will have the balls to say that all their "partners"
(most of the AV vendors, Oracle, ...) whose entire business model is based on
crapware or bait & switch will somehow be banned from the repo?

Currently it seems that both the apt and choclatey versions of Java actually
come without crapware. I have a feeling that if this kind of install becomes
the default then the crapware will be bundled there too.

~~~
nailer
I'm not really sure that relationship with AV vendors is as strong these days
for MS to harm Windows UX.

~~~
pjc50
Microsoft Security Essentials is actively trying to put them out of business.
I had the impression that it was the OEMs who liked bundling terrible
software.

I was looking at tablet PCs and they have some marketing term for "verified by
Microsoft not to contain preinstalled crapware". Android doesn't have that.

~~~
vomitcuddle
>Android doesn't have that

Android has Nexus and Google Play Edition phones.

~~~
shawabawa3
The Nexus comes with some HP printer crapware that can't be removed without
rooting (My Nexus 5 did at least)

~~~
untog
I was confused by that, too. But it's hardly on the level of Windows PCs.

~~~
cwyers
I find it far more frustrating on Android, though, as with Windows I get root
so I can remove them.

~~~
genesee
Another benefit of the Nexus program is that it's trivial to achieve root, so
you can easily get to the point of removing even the small amount of bundled
crapware.

------
Yuioup
_Sorry, penguin lovers — if you thought that 2015, in the heinous wake of
Windows 8, would finally be the year of desktop Linux, you were sadly
mistaken._

 _If you’ve ever ventured into the dark and mysterious land of Linutopia,
where Ubutologists and Debianites reign, ..._

Wow what a snarky article! I guess Extremetech does not like Linux at all...

~~~
Ronsenshi
To be honest, it was kinda funny. I don't see why we can't find it humorous
that year after year someone says that the next year will be a year of Linux.

I love Linux - been using it for several years and wouldn't trade it for
anything (be it OS X or Win with package manager).

Package manager is certainly an awesome thing, but not something that would
make me (and probably anyone else using Linux) to switch over.

~~~
treerock
Yesterday I had to update my rarely used Windows partition and install some
software for work.

Virus/Firewall updates, Windows updates, Java updates, repeated forced reboots
(four times in total) and playing hunt and peck with all these 'suspicious
behaviour' popups, remembering to untick the 'install dodgy toolbar'
checkboxes.

I'm starting to feel that a decent package manager is the main reason I
continue to use Linux.

/rant

~~~
canvia
Not having to reboot after updates is my favorite part of Linux so far.

~~~
jnbiche
Not having to reboot almost _ever_ is also pretty nice.

~~~
mod
Ubuntu forces a reboot on kernel upgrades fwiw.

~~~
jnbiche
I said _almost_. How often are you upgrading your kernel? Most of us don't
upgrade very often.

~~~
mod
Whenever the automatic update picks it up. So, basically all the time--every
week or two, anyway.

------
logn
> and who knows, that might just trigger some kind of revolution in Windows
> app management

Free trials of un-tar? Installing apps that require subscriptions to the
cloud? Dev libraries that require enterprise support packages?

Good package management on Linux is owed largely to the tireless voices such
as Stallman who understand the core issues here. Yes, tying together install
scripts and maintaining repositories requires a lot of work, and good for
Microsoft. But the reason It Just Works is because the software is free, from
top to bottom, including the OS. And Mac will have the same problem here as
Windows. For now, I'm guessing this is just a command-line interface to app
stores.

~~~
nailer
> Good package management on Linux is owed largely to the tireless voices such
> as Stallman

I thought it was due to the people designing the package managers. The people
who run the repos Stallman-like end up shipping IceWeasel and Chromium and
telling long boring stories to someone who just wanted Firefox and Chrome.

~~~
tyho
It was not the decision of debian to rebrand Firefox. Mozilla forced them to.
Debian wanted to be able to ship security patches whenever they pleased,
Mozilla required that they shipped Firefox stock, even if that meant waiting
for Mozilla to approve security patches.

Chrome is not open source. Chrome tracks you. Chromium is open source and does
not track you. Other than the slight branding differences, a user would not
know the difference.

How are these slight changes an issue?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I think you missed the point.

~~~
dllthomas
... that wanting to deliver security fixes faster than upstream is bad?

------
awor
the lead dev and architect for OneGet jumped on the reddit thread yesterday
and answered a bunch of questions:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2khkpo/windows_10_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2khkpo/windows_10_to_have_a_package_manager/)

using the username : fearthecowboy (his twitter is the same, @fearthecowboy )

This was the top comment:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2khkpo/windows_10_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2khkpo/windows_10_to_have_a_package_manager/clleyir)

~~~
berdario
Nice... For those who've never heard of him: he's also the main developer
behind Coapp

[http://coapp.org/](http://coapp.org/)

~~~
ethomson
Do you have a positive experience with CoApp? Mine has been overwhelmingly
negative: it does not appear to work, does not appear to be maintained and
does not appear to be supported.

I've been trying to get somebody to provide even a little bit of support for
Native Nuget packages via CoApp for _months_ :
[http://stackoverflow.com/q/24331880/729881](http://stackoverflow.com/q/24331880/729881)

~~~
berdario
I'm afraid to say that I haven't had a positive experience either, but I was
just interested in CoApp out of curiosity: I tried to see if it was doable to
use it to package pure Python (or other interpreters) libraries.

Obviously it was not ready yet, but I wasn't really let down: I seldom use
Windows, so I don't have any real need for it, and my perception was that with
some more months/years it would get there.

But CoApp and OneGet are worthwhile endeavors, so I'm cautiously optimistic
that they'll eventually build something that can make software installation on
Windows less painful

PS: uh, I just realized that you're a Microsoft developer as well (just like
Garret Serack)... is it so difficult to get hold of him even inside the same
company? (I don't know... maybe you're actually on different sides of the
ocean, and this would make the matter quite a bit more complicated)

~~~
ethomson
I'm also very optimistic about OneGet. I do think it's a worthwhile endeavor
(and I think CoApp is worthwhile.) My frustration comes when Microsoft builds
a technology and gives it a web page and open sources it and... promptly
ignores it.

I hope my criticisms of CoApp / Native Nuget did not transfer to a criticism
of OneGet - my suspicion is that CoApp is abandoned simply because Garrett
doesn't have time to both work one CoApp and OneGet. (It's also possible that
OneGet deprecates CoApp.)

Certainly I _understand_ all these problems - as you note, I am a Microsoftie
as well, so I'm very familiar with having too much to do and not enough time
to do it - and I've abandoned a few projects myself. But I'm not happy about
that.

As for your question about being at Microsoft: I'm not across the ocean but I
do happen to be on the other side of the country. I suspect I could have
gotten a reply if I sent an email from my microsoft.com account (even if that
reply was "sorry, don't have time") but I sort of hate throwing that around
since it feels unfair to the rest of the community trying to use it.

~~~
slavik81
> It's also possible that OneGet deprecates CoApp.

That sounds like it's the case: "CoApp's features are going into OneGet, WiX,
NuGet and Chocolatey. I had the opportunity to take this approach to get it
in-box OS, I figured that was worth it."

[http://coapp.org/news/2013-10-02-State-of-
CoApp.html#disqus_...](http://coapp.org/news/2013-10-02-State-of-
CoApp.html#disqus_thread)

------
sundvor
Wow, what's next, ability to shift-ctrl+c & shift-ctrl+v text in the console
just by default?

~~~
junto
You mean that right click on the window chrome then select 'mark' then select
text then right click window again and then choose 'copy' isn't a good user
interface?

~~~
dooptroop
Now tell me the shortcut for scrolling without a mouse. Quickly.

~~~
ygra
Alt+Space, E, L.

------
Animats
There will probably be a GUI for it, called an "App store".

Windows Vista had a command-line package manager, although it was rather lame.
It was a kludge to feed canned answers to installer prompts.

[http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc748979%28v=ws.1...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc748979%28v=ws.10%29.aspx)

~~~
ferrari8608
Windows has an app store already. I don't know if it works with the command-
line tool, but if not, I'm sure they will be tied together eventually. Ubuntu
has an app store as well.

------
mastazi
The fact that the Chocolatey repository will be compatible is very convenient,
it looks like MS is listening to the user community, well done.

~~~
ninjaoxygen
Hmm, I'm not so sure I appreciate the Chocolately support. I've found the
packages really spotty as to where they are going to install, what options
they are going to use, whether they bother to provide an uninstaller. I think
a large part of that is how Windows manages installation and libraries though.
In an ideal world maybe everything would provide MSIs, but they alone are not
a silver bullet.

I hope Microsoft take the Updates side seriously - having many separate auto-
updaters on the system all taking different views on when they should run is a
nightmare. If they created an integrated third-party application update system
I would love them for it.

~~~
jinushaun
But those are installer problems, not Chocolatey problems. Anyone who starts
on the road to automated installations on Windows realises that it's basically
the Wild West. Especially if you need to install XP or Vista era software.

------
zbowling
The article says that it's the same format as Chocolatey (an existing Windows
package management tool) but actually it's a fork of NuGet in Windows 10 and
Chocolatey is also a compatible fork of NuGet. Microsoft already owns and
maintains NuGet.

~~~
viggity
Not trying to be pedantic, but Microsoft doesn't own/maintain NuGet.
OuterCurve does and while MS supports OuterCurve with cash/time, it is its own
entity and MS does a good job keeping them separate.

------
lsiebert
So does it do dependency management? That to me is essential in a real package
management tool.

~~~
Eyas
The release notes here ([https://github.com/OneGet/oneget/blob/master/release-
notes.m...](https://github.com/OneGet/oneget/blob/master/release-notes.md))
show a few mentions of defining and getting dependencies. I'm going to guess
the answer is 'yes'.

~~~
stingraycharles
Dependency management is more than 'defining and getting dependencies'. What
if package X relies on version 1 of package A, and and package Y relies on
version 2 of package A. Will they work together, each in an isolated sandbox,
or will you have dependency conflicts?

Package management is a _really_ difficult problem to solve, which linux
package managers have barely been able to solve. In addition to this, each
programming language usually has its own package manager again, which vary a
lot in quality.

~~~
Scaevolus
Windows has had a solution for conflicting library dependencies since Windows
98: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-
side_assembly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-side_assembly)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Not all dependencies are libraries, e.g. a module requires the [version of]
the program it is a module for.

------
Fuzzwah
I'm coming to this massive comment party late, but I wanted to drop my
thoughts about this and explain why I'm personally very excited by OneGet.

I'm a very experienced Windows Server Admin (15 years). I'm also a fairly
experienced Linux Server Admin (7 years, on and off).

I'm currently an SCCM guru for a ~4000 user organisation.

I'm sure that if OneGet is supported by MS to the level which the developer
explained in the reddit thread it'll be a boon to power users managing their
own systems and to desktop support people.

But I can imagine that it'll be the SCCM teams who can leverage the most out
of it.

The thought of being able to deploy and manage software across desktops and
servers in a similar way to apt or yum makes me feel something close to utter
joy.

I've had to build some very complex task sequences to install software on
corporate machines. The worst example I can give is MS's own Dynamics CRM
application. I was seriously proud of the batch files, registry inserts, dll
hell avoidance, dependency solving, mother of all automated install processes
to get Dynamics installed and hooked into Outlook in a magical way that the
end user had no clue the complexity of.

It was only after slugging through developing all of the above that I found
the incredible PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit [1], which people smarter
than me had developed to basically handle everything I'd just slogged through.

From what I see OneGet has the potential of allowing us to easily push
installs and updates via SCCM with out having to rely on 3rd party tools,
batch files, msi rebuilding and general hackery.

Even if it doesn't gain wide support from software vendors, just enabling me
to rip everything out of an msi and repackage it into a private OneGet repo
sounds superior to having to rely on complex SCCM task sequences.

I'll be watching this closely.

[1]
[https://psappdeploytoolkit.codeplex.com/](https://psappdeploytoolkit.codeplex.com/)

------
joenathan
This will be a great way to automate Java and Flash updates, so users don't
have play uncheck the adware every time there's an update.

~~~
andrewstuart2

      install-package java --defaults
    
      > Installing:
      > Java
      > Ask.com toolbar
      > Ask.com rootkit

~~~
mahmud
More like

    
    
      C: \>  instpkg32.exe /DefaultSettings:ALL_DEFAULTS
      C: \>
    

Cryptically named command with verbose arguments, that then goes on to fire a
GUI window that requires manual intervention: that's the Microsoft way.

~~~
wmt
Good job at not reading the article! Had you read it, you would've learned
that the commands work like this:

    
    
        Find-Package Firefox
        Install-Package Firefox
    

I admit it's not as easy as on e.g. Debian:

    
    
        sudo apt-get remove iceweasel
        sudo echo deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian import >>/etc/apt/sources.list
        sudo gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 3EE67F3D0FF405B2
        sudo gpg --export 3EE67F3D0FF405B2 > 3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg
        sudo apt-key add ./3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg
        sudo rm ./3EE67F3D0FF405B2.gpg
        sudo apt-get update
        sudo apt-get install firefox

~~~
hk__2
This is a deliberately contrived example, the only line that matter is the
last one:

    
    
        sudo apt-get install firefox

~~~
awalton
Firefox isn't in the Debian repos, unfortunately. But Iceweasel is installed
by default on the desktop, so there's that. Unfortunately, Iceweasel is
chronically behind mainline Firefox and suffers from many horrifying bugs that
make it almost not worth the effort to try to use, which is why the
grandparent comment goes through so much effort (Well, outside of the
obviously well planted troll.)

Also, Linux Mint is a terrible way to get Firefox for Debian. You're better
off installing it from the "Ubuntuzilla" repo, which contains just Mozilla
components built for Debian-based OSes:
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/)
(Ignore the hellhole that Sourceforge has become).

Honestly, I wish Mozilla would just create a Debian repo (and one with
Nightlies would be nice), but I understand the scorched earth there...

~~~
johnward
This is the problem I have with a lot of software. We're supposed to use
redhat, for example, but don't subscribe to the RHEL repos. So I then I have
to go add EPEL repos or find whatever repo the actual piece of software I want
is in. Like google chrome, each time I can remember where to get it.

------
arjie
Fantastic. It'd be great if it would integrate with the Store. I'm guessing
that even if it supports dependency resolution, most packages will just be
monolithic blobs like currently. That does have its advantages, so it'll be
interesting to see if people switch to specifying dependencies instead of
bundling them.

------
Systemic33
Will be interesting if this will be similar to linux with the possibility of
community driven repositories alongside official repo's. Or if it's more of an
admintool to do windows updates/windows store installs.

Edit: Apparently, it's also open source [1]

[1] [https://github.com/OneGet/oneget](https://github.com/OneGet/oneget)

~~~
A_COMPUTER
It says it uses the same package format at Chocolatey and you can even add
their repos. I don't know if there's any caveats to this, but it's a very,
very good sign. I am excited about this.

------
SwellJoe
As simple as it seems, this single failing has been my primary reason for
outright dismissing Windows as a reasonable contender for server usage, no
matter what else Microsoft might do to make it attractive for a variety of
server tasks. A system that cannot be updated easily without human
intervention is not a system that deserves a place in any data center.

~~~
alyx
I take it you're not familiar with Windows Server...

~~~
SwellJoe
It's been nearly a decade since I managed any Windows servers. I'm more than
willing to believe there are features of modern Windows systems that I don't
know about. Perhaps you can fill me in on what I've been missing...I assume
you're implying there is some equivalent to yum or apt-get on Windows that
allows easily updating system and third-party packages from the command line
without human intervention?

And, do most vendors make their software available through this mechanism?
That would be a miraculous improvement over the couple dozen different update
services that run on a Windows box (Java updater, Adobe updater, Apple
updater, Oracle updater for VirtualBox, etc.), all of which have wildly
variable reliability and are mostly impossible to script or automate. If those
are gone from the Windows management experience, that'd be great.

~~~
wfjackson
I've thankfully never seen a Windows Server with Flash, Reader, iTunes or
VirtualBox installed, sounds like a security nightmare waiting to happen
regardless updates.

I also see lots of insecure and outdated applications running on Linux
servers, especially Wordpress, Drupal, myphpadmin, cPanel etc. Heartbleed and
Shellshock themselves are still not patched in a good percentage of servers.

~~~
SwellJoe
I was merely providing examples everyone is familiar with.

What software do you run on your Windows servers? And, how does it get
updated?

~~~
gfodor
I run a few windows servers maintained via ansible. There is a protocol called
winrm built that is functionally equivalent to ssh for the purposes of
remotely controlling a box. Ansible uses winrm to provision. Beyond that,
chocolatey.org provides a complete package management solution as long as you
are looking to install popular free (as in beer) software. Also, you need to
learn powershell to do anything useful. It's painful but I have to sit back in
awe at the extent of the APIs available to you from the powershell prompt,
each one hand crafted by a Microsoft employee. Pretty much anything you need
to from a OS configuration perspective can be done in powershell pretty
easily.

Once you get over these couple of things it's not terrible. (though I of
course widely prefer linux)

~~~
krylon
I think one can hardly exaggerate what an improvement over cmd.exe PowerShell
is. Even if I really hated the outcome, these days PowerShell is just too damn
useful to ignore as a Windows admin.

One thing I am seriously disappointed with is the documentation or lack
thereof. PowerShell's Get-Help/man cmdlet is admittetly nice, but compared to
the kind of documentation you get with Perl or Python, I am left underwhelmed.

------
lucian1900
> much to the lament of Linux users

What? Everyone will be happy to have one, especially people that use Linux at
least some of the time.

~~~
krylon
I agree. I use OSX and Linux at home, but I am a Windows admin at work. And
while I strongly prefer Unix-like systems to Windows, I welcome every effort
to improve it and make my job easier.

------
jimmcslim
Chocolatey is great... although I wish it had a different "more
professional"-sounding name.

When I was using it in anger a while ago I also found the quality of some of
the packages to be a bit random, many of them just seemed to be random
developer X's favourite aggregation of other packages. In which case I'm happy
to see that they are adopting package moderation;

[http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/10/27/chocolatey...](http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/10/27/chocolatey-
now-has-package-moderation.aspx)

------
jqm
Someone at work told me Windows 10 is also going to have virtual desktops.
Haven't verified.

I did play with a release preview of 10. It was actually OK in a brief 5
minute survey. I won't ever use it for day to day stuff, (I'm a Linux user),
but its nice to see them at least appearing to make an effort. I think most of
us in the field are at some level negatively impacted when Microsoft engages
in evil/stupid behavior, so it's nice when they come out with something good
which they do from time to time.

~~~
fetbaffe
How to Use Virtual Desktops in Windows 10
[http://www.howtogeek.com/197625/how-to-use-virtual-
desktops-...](http://www.howtogeek.com/197625/how-to-use-virtual-desktops-in-
windows-10/)

------
bnt
But why "Install-Package", "Add-Package" and "Update-Package" \- it's not like
you can install, add or update anything else with this tool.

~~~
useerup
Those are PowerShell cmdlets - and follow PowerShell verb-noun naming
convention. There is a finite set of "approved" _verbs_ (though you can use
your own) representing the "actions" you can perform against a resource (the
_noun_ part).

From within a PowerShell console I can "add" a lot of things. Try typing

    
    
        gcm -verb add
    

from a PowerShell console (gcm is alias for Get-Command and the command above
will list all commands where "Add" is the verb).

------
tn13
I am not sure why even in 2014 we have to pit Linux against Windows. We have
surely grown out of that sort of debate.

Microsoft successfully achieved its objective of putting a computer in every
home with the help of Windows. We should thank them for that. Linux on other
hand has grown leaps and bounds. Android after all is a linux kernel fork. I
think as technology lovers we can surely love both and look at them as
technologies complimenting each other rather than competing.

~~~
inclemnet
> I am not sure why even in 2014 we have to pit Linux against Windows. We have
> surely grown out of that sort of debate.

I think it's unfair to frame any linux/windows debate as fundamentally
childish. There are big differences between them, both philosophical and
practical, in ways that have real impacts on the users.

~~~
tn13
I never said there are no differences but those differences are more like
between a Business Suite and Bikini rather than Republican Party v/s
Democratic Party.

Two different OSs which have a different view of the world and catering to
different needs in different ways rather than something where their success is
a zero sum game between them.

------
lucb1e
Good step, now the rest of Windows... I mean, Program Files containing the
binaries is not even in %PATH%. I assume improvements will be made here too,
but I wonder.

~~~
pjc50
One problem with putting every subdirectory of Program Files in the path is
that most of them contain 'setup.exe' and 'uninstall.exe'. Type "uninstall" at
the command line to uninstall a random program!

~~~
lucb1e
Or we could use a real binaries path (e.g. %programfiles%/bin) and symlink
(NTFS supports symlinks I think) the binaries from there. Then include that in
the %path%.

There are many ways to do this but until Windows and its developers decide on
one, it'll remain a big mess.

------
slavik81
I liked how the idea's champion dealt with Microsoft bureaucracy:

> So, back in August I started looking at what I was going to accomplish over
> the next year or so, and I thought it would be a good idea to try and see if
> I could get some of the CoApp package management ideas put into Windows
> itself (hey, it'd be kinda nice to be able to do apt-get style-stuff and
> have that built into the OS)

> I had proposed some of this at the beginning of the product cycle for
> Windows Blue (Server 2012 R2/Windows 8.1) but it was a little too late in
> the planning cycle, and I gave too-grand of a vision.

> I finally came to full understanding of some advice my pappy once told me:
> _" The secret to success is to find someone else to care what you care
> about, and make it their problem."_ ... I looked at him like I understood
> what he meant, but he could tell that I was just paying lip service. He then
> said _" Try it this way: Set the building on fire, take someone else's stuff
> into the building with you, and then cry for help"_

[http://coapp.org/news/2013-10-02-State-of-
CoApp.html](http://coapp.org/news/2013-10-02-State-of-CoApp.html)

------
johnchristopher
> While Windows and Mac users have to run graphical installers — you know,
> where you hit Next a few times and try to avoid installing bundled crapware
> — Linux users can just open up a command line and type sudo apt-get install
> vlc.

Right. As if VLC on windows comes with crapware.

As if apt-get [0] never asked cryptic messages [1].

[0] or yaourt or any other package manager

[1] and it's more about the package than the package manager

~~~
dnet
> As if VLC on windows comes with crapware.

At least it did, in a way

[http://www.howtogeek.com/194993/the-windows-store-is-a-
cessp...](http://www.howtogeek.com/194993/the-windows-store-is-a-cesspool-of-
scams-why-doesnt-microsoft-care/)

~~~
johnchristopher
> The Store Even Pollutes System Search

> rse yet, the Windows Store is now integrated with the system search feature.
> Search for an application using the Start screen search or search charm and
> these garbage apps from the Windows Store will appear. For example, whenever
> I use the system search feature to launch Firefox, I see a link to install
> “Firefox Training Lite” from the Windows Store.

This is insane.

But it's hardly VLC's fault. You could say Windows is distributing malwares.

------
emsy
I believe the biggest problem for its success is that most companies don't
want to give up the control a dedicated installer gives them (e.g. installing
AskBar that comes with Java, as some comments pointed out).

In Linux, dedicated installers are the exception not the rule. I'm curious how
the adoption on Windows will be, especially for commercial/non-free software
which there is a lot on Windows.

I'm also curious how they will present the packages to the average user. Worst
case, the user will have to look in three different places to uninstall
software (namely System Control, the package manager, and in directories of
software that isn't registered anywhere).

------
analog31
I love it. Bring on "sudo apt-get install."

Somehow, folks have been led to think that the command line is a scary place,
just for geeks, but it's so easy to lead someone through a slightly complex
manual installation by just giving them a few commands to copy and paste into
the terminal.

And as a somewhat casual user myself, I even find it easier to follow a
command line installation than to wade through several pages of "open this
window, click on this, click on that," especially when the instructions and
the actual installer don't exactly agree due to revision divergence.

------
xyzzy_plugh
There has been an (albeit poor) package manager for some time:
[http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
ca/library/cc748979(v=ws.10)...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
ca/library/cc748979\(v=ws.10\).aspx)

I've personally struggled with it to fix corrupt updated installed by windows
updates, and while it doesn't meet the bar set by mainstream Linux distro
package managers, it is a package manager nonetheless.

~~~
agumonkey
Amazing how Microsoft keep stuff in obscurity.

~~~
w-ll
Blame marketing.

------
pmontra
Welcome Windows10! What next, maybe a network oriented display manager to be
able to open a window on another pc, phone, tablet, xbox? ;-)

------
dpina
Plus, it seems like puppet is working on a plugin to make use of OneGet. It'll
make work much more interesting in the future that I'm actually looking
forwarding this happening.

Couldn't find much more on puppet on this topic than this presentation:
[http://www.slideshare.net/ferventcoder](http://www.slideshare.net/ferventcoder)

------
aespinoza
I hope they change the options. I think this is way too long for a command:

* Install-Package -Name firefox

When in Linux I can just do this:

* apt-get install firefox

I would love to see this:

Package -install firefox

~~~
happy_ginger
That is pretty much an impossibility as it's a Powershell cmdlet which follows
a verb-noun rule for naming things.

~~~
Karunamon
This requirement has kept me away from taking powershell seriously. English is
a _horrible_ language for telling computers what to do.

------
annnnd
I think the article misses the point. It doesn't matter if the package manager
is CLI or GUI-based, what matters is good UI and quality (+ price) of
application packages.

Mobile stores (Google Play, Apple Store) are a good example of this... they
host many apps & are easy to use. Who cares if you use keyboard, mouse or
touch to get them.

------
kyllo
Cool, but will you still have to restart your computer every time you install
something?

~~~
olegbl
Huh, I haven't done that since Vista.

~~~
msie
I have a really hard time believing that.

~~~
bruce511
For the purposes of this reply, I'm talking about packages as distinct from
Windows itself.

A reboot is required if something you are trying to install is already in uss.
Windows locks executable files and dells while they are being used, so it's
not possible for an installer to overwrite them. When an installer detects
this it places the new file in a temp store, and windows empties this store on
startup,

Thus if you are updating say Java, and the Java binaries are in use, then a
reboot will be required. On the other hand if the binaries are not in use,
then they won't.

So the need to reboot will vary enormously from one user to the next, based n
their habits (do you close the program before updating it?) and also the kinds
of programs they have running when they do an update.

Aside: some installers can detect that the program is running and terminate it
as part of the upgrade process, thus explicitly avoiding a reboot. That's why
say Firefox and Chrome never need a reboot. But that's easier to do with a
program, and less easy with a runtime like say Java.

~~~
kyllo
_Windows locks executable files and dells while they are being used, so it 's
not possible for an installer to overwrite them_

Exactly, and Linux doesn't do that, hence my comment. The Windows model is
flawed--why do you need to lock a binary on disk when a copy of it is running
in main memory? Linux just lets the installer overwrite the files on disk, so
there's no need to restart the whole OS, just the program whose files were
updated.

I assume Windows 10 will not change this behavior? A command-line package
manager on Windows would be cool, but its utility will be limited if you still
need to restart the whole OS just to upgrade a program that's currently
running.

~~~
wallyhs
Why do you need to lock a binary on disk when a copy of it is running in main
memory?

Because the copy in memory may still want to use the old version. Raymond Chen
explained it here: [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/2008.11.windowsc...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/2008.11.windowsconfidential.aspx)

~~~
kyllo
To prevent DLL Hell, in other words.

Again, not a problem on Linux because Linux keeps numbered versions of .so
files.

 _So it 's not that Windows has to restart after replacing a file that is in
use. It's just that it would rather not deal with the complexity that results
if it doesn't._

In other words, "we didn't want to bother with versioning DLLs."

~~~
whoopdedo
It's more complicated than that. Windows doesn't have true inodes but rather
uses the name alone to identify files. So you can't unlink any open file. (Try
to delete a directory when you have a command prompt open in it.)

Windows did hack on a form of DLL versioning in the form of isolated
assemblies. It's ugly and complicated and Microsoft still resorts to
suggesting that you avoid DLL hell by bundling local copies of all your shared
libraries. Which kind of makes me wonder why they're even called "shared" at
all. May as well just statically link.

------
ForFreedom
Any idea when its available for download for consumers?

~~~
gerbal
Today. [http://oneget.org/oneget.zip](http://oneget.org/oneget.zip)

------
talles
Presentation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAMEVMO4IRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAMEVMO4IRY)

------
rejschaap
I think there is a huge missed opportunity here. I mean, it's good that
Microsoft is finally adding functionality that went mainstream in the late
90's. But why don't just skip the flawed approach most of the current Linux
distributions use? In my opinion they should have been looking at a more
declaritive approach, such as the Nix package manager uses.

I will agree though that this oversight is not as bad as TFSVC. Where they
were building a centralized version control system when the whole world was
switching to decentralized VCSs.

~~~
windowsworkstoo
It's not the NixOS approach and it needs some work to make it more palatable,
but they already ship DSC with PoSH/WMF 4, which goes some of the way.

------
whoisthemachine
It seems to me if Microsoft is copying features from Linux for Windows, then
it may be that Linux on the desktop is starting to worry them.

~~~
krylon
As much as I wish it were so, I do not think that is the case at all. What
worries them, if anything, is more people using Macs, and more people ditching
their PC/laptop in favor of shiny smartphones and tablets.

------
gum_ina_package
This could be awesome, especially if it can integrate with the Windows Store.
Maybe even your XBox/WP too?

------
melling
I'm not a Windows user so maybe I'm way off, but wouldn't adding Cortana go
much farther in getting people to upgrade?

How's the Kinect support in Windows? Quite honestly, Microsoft is only
competing against itself. How many XP uses are still out there? A couple
hundred couple hundred million? Give them a reason to get excited.

~~~
gum_ina_package
It seems like you haven't paid much attention to the leaks and rumors out
there... Cortana is 100% going to be in Windows 10 from the looks of it. Also,
this package manager is designed to get the people MS needs excited the most -
hardcore power users like us.

~~~
melling
That's what I said. I'm not a Windows users. I follow a little Windows phone
and some Surface 3 news.

------
GuiA
> Find-Package

> Install-Package

Dashes and uppercase...what terrible names. Is the windows shell case
sensitive (I seem to recall it is but it may have changed)? We've been
designing command line interfaces for over half a century now, this is just
lazy. Shells are not magically exempt from UI best practices just because
they're not graphical.

~~~
geographomics
It's not case sensitive in terms of execution, this is just how they are
stylized: "Verb-Noun" is the standard format for PowerShell commands (or
"cmdlets", to use their terminology).

------
davidgerard
So is this basically taking Ninite's business model?

------
TheSoftwareGuy
Awesome. Maybe I'll end up buying a windows machine sometime soon.

------
chippy
But will it have sudo, or would you run PowerShell as Administrator?

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Windows has runas and has since Windows NT 4.0. Maybe you should educate
yourself instead of making incorrect snarky comments?

~~~
talles
Jeez, take it easy.

It's a legit question, few people are aware of _runas_.

~~~
chippy
Yep, I'm not aware of it.

------
meapix
linux is not package manager

------
jeffmess
Welcome to the party!

------
kolev
One-up OS X!

------
mherkender
This reminds me of that time that Microsoft caught up to a competitor years
too late to have any impact.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
If Windows Server or Exchange weren't a massive continued success you might
have a point. As it is you just sound pathetic.

[http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-
updated-20...](http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-
updated-2013/)

~~~
72deluxe
We were looking to replace our ancient Exchange server with an Open-Source
equivalent but nothing has a feature-parity. Nothing has the widespread
support as Exchange: ability to fetch on all mobiles, widespread desktop
protocol support (not just IMAP but you know, that Exchangey binary protocol),
a web interface etc. etc. etc.

It just is a massive continued success, although from my migration from 2003
to 2010 and subsequent pain to 2010 SP2, I didn't find it successful or
painless - I don't miss maintaining it.

I think a lot of folks on here look at the world through very narrow glasses
where they write Python web-apps under Linux, or work in SOHO environments
that rely on external email providers; they don't come across the all-
pervasive Windows desktop culture. They never need to touch Active Directory,
let alone understand what it is or why they'd need it, and never have to touch
an Exchange server or roll-out applications across an array of desktop
machines.

It is a pity because some end up making short-sighted narrow-FOV comments
about Microsoft and Windows etc. that are unnecessary. Just because we don't
use a system, we shouldn't assume that nobody else does.

~~~
JetSpiegel
You tell me that only Exchange can work with their own binary protocol? I'm
shocked!

Evolution can understand it, as I recall, and Red Hat has a server side
component too, I don't recall the name now.

~~~
72deluxe
Haha yes, but they also have their RPC over HTTP method if you don't want to
use the binary protocol, plus the ActiveSync method, plus the SMTP and POP3
interfaces, plus the widely utilised Web layer that was rewritten after 2003 -
I think most of the Exchange clients on mobiles use this.

The ability to reset mobiles devices from within Exchange when a device gets
pinched and to enforce keylocks on mobile devices is a great feature that I
can't find anywhere else at such a low OS level.

------
robomartin
If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I'd get a lot more excited.

I have to use Windows for the myriad of engineering tools that are not
available under any other OS, for example, SolidWorks, Altium Designer,
various embedded toolsets, etc. And, while I've been using PC's (and Macs and
Linux) since they came on the scene I hate, hate, hate the DOS or technically
DOS-like underbelly of the beast.

I know it is a ridiculous idea. It would break everything, including their
profitable corporate platforms.

Yes, there are ways to mitigate this but it'd be nice if all computing
platforms got behind a common standard. Utopia. I know.

~~~
cperciva
_If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I 'd get a lot more excited._

GPL would make that impossible. There are reasons OS X is based on BSD, and
not all of them are about technical superiority.

~~~
cwyers
Android is built on Linux, and it seems to do just fine despite the kernel
being GPL'd.

~~~
0x0
"just fine" isn't perfectly true. The bionic interface they somehow "wash"
from GPL headers to BSD headers is questionable.

~~~
dezgeg
Nope, there is nothing questionable about it. Linus himself has stated it:
[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831856)

~~~
0x0
That's interesting. Still, there are a huge number of copyright holders of the
linux kernel and some may have a different opinion on the legalese applies.

------
snake_plissken
In terms of managing programs/packages, what is wrong with Add-Remove
Programs/Programs and Features? I've always found these to be satisfactory. Or
am missing the point here? In terms of automatically retrieving the correct
dependencies, I can see this being pretty useful, even if most programs
already automatically install the dependencies or at least let you know that
you don't have them. Maybe I'll find myself in .Net framework or MS C++
distribution hell a little bit less. The same problem, with missing or
incorrect shared libraries, seems to happen just as much when I am on a
Free/Net/OpenBSD system. And the workflow for installing a Windows program is
fundamentally different from the *Nix eco-system; as the former is mostly
closed while the latter open, you have to be much more discrete when
installing on Windows.

Maybe I am using Windows differently than a lot of other people even if I
consider myself a "power" user. I've always felt much of Windows' power and
usability came from it's GUI focused experience (forgetting the maddening
changes that can occur between versions).

Post: after writing all that, I looked at Programs and Features (on windows 7
now) and I think the biggest advantage of something like this would be mapping
out dependencies, even if I don't think I've ever deleted one by mistake.
Still, it would be nice.

~~~
432uihf23
Installing and updating Windows programs is painfully slow and complicated
compared to Linux. Instead of searching for a program and clicking "Install",
you have to find and navigate to the website, download the installer, execute
it, grant permissions to run, uncheck adware boxes, choose install options and
click exit. For every single program. Many programs still make you do the same
for every update and that's one of the reasons most users don't keep their
software up-to-date.

Installing and managing software is easily my biggest gripe with Windows right
now.

