Winget

Linux based operating systems have always had a package manager for installing software. In Ubuntu you have Apt and Centos/Red Hat have Yum. For Windows there was no such thing. So if you want to install software you had to make your scripts, figure out how to do the silence installs, keep all the binaries up to date and make them available on a central location.

Then a few years ago Chocolatey was born. And it made it possible to make automated installation of software on new servers much easier. I have been using it inside the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit for server installation. And also more and more on my own Windows 10 computers. It is not only easy for installing software but also for keeping them up to date. Which is getting more important these days.

The last year Microsoft have been working on their own package manager with the very original name Windows Package Manager. But most people will refer to it as WinGet. Last week they made it available for everyone. I have not had much time yet to test it. But I will have a closer look at it. To see if is a good alternative for Chocolatey.