Chocolatey - Package Manager for Windows

If you have used alternative operating systems in the past, you are certainly used to the luxury that a package manager provides. All your software is in one place in a single central repository, maintained by the distribution authors. You don’t have to search, download, or manually install anything – you simply type yum install package-name (if you used RHEL, CentOS, Oracle Linux, or Fedora), sudo pacman -S package-name (if you used Arch, Manjaro, ArcoLinux, or Anarchy), or sudo apt install package-name (if you used Debian or Ubuntu). And there is a probability bordering on certainty that no one will ever bundle any malware with the installed software (though never say never). If you are too picky and don’t like typing commands into the console, you can download a GUI frontend (for example, Pamac for pacman).

Windows 10 is increasingly adopting the philosophy of these console-friendly systems. Alongside the fantastic Windows Terminal, it now has its own package manager, Chocolatey – the majority of common applications have their own package in Chocolatey. Microsoft uses its own Windows Store as its primary software distribution channel, which is also a package manager in its own way – albeit a clickable one designed for average users. Chocolatey is aimed more at power users who prefer the keyboard over clicking a mouse… Microsoft uses this channel too. For instance, Windows Terminal appeared first in Chocolatey and only a few days later in the Windows Store. Now let’s demonstrate how to install a package (let’s say Google Chrome):

Note: Before you start installing anything, run your console in administrator mode. How? Right-click the Start icon and then choose Windows PowerShell (Admin): see this image for more details. Some newer packages do not require administrator privileges, but most do.

Type the following in your console (PowerShell or Windows Terminal):

choco install googlechrome

This command installs the current version of Google Chrome. Here are some more examples:

Or if you don’t feel like typing so much, you can simplify it and install everything at once with a single command:

choco install firefox vlc dotnetcore jre8 whatsapp viber microsoft-edge-insider-dev

And for those who don’t want to type at all, you can download a GUI wrapper for Chocolatey. It is called chocolatey-gui (what a surprise), here is a screenshot and here is the command to install it: choco install chocolateygui. All other packages can be found here: https://chocolatey.org/packages. Personally, I uninstalled my traditionally installed apps and reinstalled them via Chocolatey. The main benefit is that I can manage them all collectively, updating everything with a single command from the console:

choco upgrade all

So I no longer have to manually check for updates… I can also uninstall packages via Chocolatey, even several at once:

choco uninstall notepadplusplus googlechrome atom 7zip

The package manager grew out of NuGet – which is the packaging system for .NET. I just don’t understand why every language and technology has to have its own manager with its own syntax, as I currently have these in Windows:

Essentially, every runtime has its own – e.g., OCaml has Opam, Haskell has Cabal, Rust has Cargo. I don’t understand why they can’t unify them (at least the ones from Microsoft could be unified).