Why do people prefer portable over setup or app store?

[StainlessS]

Arh yes, the technicians version, Being tight fisted ... I dont got dat.

Originally Posted by Groucho2004

Imaging the Windows and/or boot partition is what 99% of disk image software users need, isn't it?

I like to switch to an OS that I'm not gonna image, and run ghost from that. I usually have at least 2 OS on my systems, sometimes three and have on occasion had 4. Otherwise I jump into some bootable USB flash drive eg Hiren 15.2 and use Mini Windows XP and some imager.

I also like SystemRescueCD ISO/USB boot [based on Gentoo, I'de like one day to set up my own Gentoo from scratch, but seems one helluva pain in the buttocks to do that].
Two I've got but dont think I managed to get to like, are... G4L (Ghost for Linux) and CloneZilla.

EDIT: ReactOS recently (last two weeks) updated (v0.411 or something like that), I'm gonna give that a try again,
previous version was most disappointing and I never managed to get it to even boot on at least one system.

EDIT: I used to know someone who had 20+ OS on a single system, used bootIt_NG I think (allowed boot from MBR disk logical partition).

EDIT: Anyone know a better (avoids using word "best" due to inherent fear of moderator reprisal) boot controller, my beloved XOSL dont work where OS greater than 128GB from MBR,
I need ability to 'hide' all Windows bootable partitions from booting OS, so all Win OS think they are on 'C' drive. If also works on GPT would be bonus.
Ideally would work much like XOSL.
EDIT: Dont anybody suggest using MS boot controller, I have never used that. I want totally separate Boot control exclusive of windows or even Linux OS'es.
EDIT: Well I do use MS boot control, but only to boot its very own system, eg can Generalize Win7 so that it moves boot control to the system partition where boot partition no longer used,
can afterwards eg install linux or whatever onto the original boot partition[partition resize required]. I dont as yet know if I can Generalize Win10, and that is the only time I use MS boot
control as I dont as yet know how to avoid (nor do I really have any reason to avoid yet, maybe if I ever get a desktop Win10 system, then I will have reason to avoid).

[qyot27]

Originally Posted by Sparktank

I observe this with FFMPEG and ImageMagick if they're both accessible by PATH,etc.
ImageMagick doesn't match the same as Zeranoe's FFMPEG builds.

I can't remember what I was trying to do with a video, but when I went to encode it with FFMPEG, it ended using IM version instead and terminated immediately due to lack of support for my operations.

So IM is in a portable state with nowhere to be seen in PATH and must have the full filepath included in scripts,etc.

Zeranoe FFMPEG is always udpated manually and the only one in PATH.

Any program I install, I try to make sure it isn't calling its own version of FFMPEG when I go do a batch or something.

Why not just out-and-out delete the FFmpeg in ImageMagick's installation if you need both it and FFmpeg on the PATH? There shouldn't be any harm in doing that at all; since IM shipped with ffmpeg.exe, it was invoking ffmpeg.exe and not the APIs in the libs. Unless there's something wonky about them hardcoding a path to the .exe (which can usually be sidestepped by symlinking), it should pick up and use Zeranoe's builds just fine.

My own personal gripe re:IM is that if you don't have the PATH order right, you end up invoking internal Windows functions with the same name (*cough* convert *cough*). At least IM7 introduced a single main application to handle this - which doesn't conflict with the Windows userland - and only keeps the old tools around for compatibility with IM6.

[Ghitulescu]

There were very good points arguing the benefits of NOT using a Setup before, so I won't repeat them in long

* most Install suites use pre-existent setups, which are beyond the control of even the developers - who knows what they do behind the scenes?!
* most install routines are so complicated (why???) that even installing some tools would be problematic at desinstall phase (yes, not everybody MUST like one's software)
* I don't see the reason why one would use Install for simple pieces of software (imagine FixVTS would come with 15MB Setup.exe)
* the links to external tools or libraries, which sometimes must be done manually in the Install routine, could with the same effort be set in the program itself and saved in the accompanying INI file
* generally, since most "suites" essentially reuse CLI tools (like ffmpeg or sox), and since the path to those locations are easily to implement in the main software, many people would become suspicious why the need for an installer annyway, many of them being notoriuos for doing lots of actions, including spying, behind one's back

The only true advanatge of using installers is when a software really needs a particular version of another software, but even there, a user could set up the links to CLI stuff, in the end the user that browse D9 here is not that kind of idiot for which the installers have been created in the first time.

And I prefer local INIs instead of the recommended MS policy of storing them in Windows registry.

[ChaosKing]

And another reason why I avoid setup.exe is bcs sometimes a copy of the installer ist stored on the hdd for "deinstallation purposes". A good solution for "tools" is Chocolatey, a package manager for windows. You can update all apps with a click and it add stuff to Path, like ffmpeg or youtube-dl.

[stax76]

Originally Posted by ChaosKing

And another reason why I avoid setup.exe is bcs sometimes a copy of the installer ist stored on the hdd for "deinstallation purposes". A good solution for "tools" is Chocolatey, a package manager for windows. You can update all apps with a click and it add stuff to Path, like ffmpeg or youtube-dl.

Chocolatey seem to be nice, I've installed ffmpeg and youtube-dl with it and I decided to use PowerShell exclusively and never again use cmd in order to improve my PowerShell knowledge.

Learning to use mpv/libmpv brought me much closer to the whole command line concept I guess. I tried a few Linux systems lately and Ubuntu was the only system which hadn't broken high DPI support using a high zoom value.

Looking forward for the announced Windows Terminal.

One thing I noticed is Chrome warns heavily about exe downloads, is that why some apps wrap installers in zip files? I'm not sure what I should do with that.

[Emulgator]

For me the daily basis is standalone, only shortly interrupted by suites that demand to be intrusive.

I can easily port these standalones across 5 machines today: 2x Win7U64, 3x WinXPPro32.
_PROG holds 30 Tool group folders containing 429pcs. 32 bit Program folders and exes.
_PROG64 holds 14 group folders containing 41pcs. 64 bit Program folders and exes.
All dependencies reside in respective program folders, fitting down to XP32 compatibility.
So even different machines munch nicely.

Oh, and it's not about paying.
I have bought my stuff and donated many times to freeware and opensource writers
when I saw the huge effort, progress and maintenance they made,
no matter if benefited from that often or just a few times.