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Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#371

Post by daemin »

j16sdiz wrote: post #276
daemin wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Special installers / uninstallers and also the ability to install and run things outside the official OS store.

Many program can run as standalone .exe, or just unzip as a folder. All the points you list does not need _Special_ installers / uninstaller.

Yes, that is what I mean by my last point: "It allows for portable installations and to run software just copied from other sources." You can think of decompressing from an archive as running a very simple installation program.

If the only installer available was one provided by the OS how long do you think it would take to make that the only way to install and run software. These things are being done right now on many platforms in the name of safety, security, and to a lesser extent convenience.

The more phone-like a platform is the fewer ways you have to install and run software on it. So far general purpose computers still allow you to install software in other ways than the built-in method (i.e. just unzip and place in a directory), but it's getting increasingly common to require executables be signed, and things are always moving to be more and more locked down.

Now the use of "Special" installers/uninstallers is from the original comment, I would just refer to them as "regular" installers/uninstallers. I do like the ability and freedom to have an ecosystem of these things, as I don't want the one OS method to be the only way to install applications.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#372

Post by mratsim »

a13o wrote: post #356
sh4rks wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people in the finance world prefer native apps to web apps. It's bizarre.

Load a sufficiently large and complex spreadsheet in Excel vs Sheets and you'll have your answer. Sheets will freeze and Excel will open in seconds. There's also a feature gap that Google will probably never close, because why bother if you can't load the volume of data those power users are working with in the first place.

Aren't Excel sheets still limited to 1M rows or so?

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#373

Post by [deleted] »

koiueo wrote: post #364
threatofrain wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Linux software culture also leaves stuff behind and leaves it up to the assumed system mastery of the user to clean things up.

That's too broad and misleading. Package manager tracks every single file installed by a package, preventing overwrites by other packages. Strict permissions prohibit software from littering all over the place. What are you taking about? Do you want package manager to remove yourb personal data of it was created by an application your decided to remove?

[deleted]

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#374

Post by mattashii »

marcodiego wrote: post #352

Uninstaller should not exist. Installers should not exist either. Every OS should have a package manager. The name clearly implies what it does: it manages packages; this task should be left to a specialized software, not to the user. Linux distros were pioneers in this aspect and "stores" of the modern world are just a clothed versions of package managers. of course, a power user should should have the right to chan…

> Uninstaller should not exist. Installers should not exist either. Every OS should have a package manager

What is a package manager, if not an (un)installer shared between projects?

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#375

Post by sebazzz »

Spivak wrote: post #366
sebazzz wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The name clearly implies what it does: it manages packages; this task should be left to a specialized software Yes, but the modifications that are possible are limited by what the API of the package manager provides. Like Windows Installer does. If that doesn't work you create custom install uninstall logic, which has the potential to be less robust/reliable than what the package manager provides.

I mean all Linux package managers allow running arbitrary code on install/uninstall and it seems to work well enough.

It has also failed enough times for me, but luckily it often works like "on error resume next" do the package manager doesn't get stuck in a bad state.

Regardless, installation on Linux is often just dropping some files somewhere and perhaps a modprobe.

In Windows you have so many things you can do: filesystem, registry, COM registration, GAC, file associations, etc.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#376

Post by Tainnor »

ubermonkey wrote: post #367
amelius wrote: post #345

Why do we still need to install stuff? Why can I run webpages just fine without installing anything? Installation shouldn't exist, at least not from the user's point of view.

It more or less doesn't in MacOS, and has NEVER really been a thing. While there ARE some tools that require a more invasive "installation" process (e.g., VMWare Fusion), the overwhelming majority of Mac software is installed by just dragging the application bundle into /Applications. (App bundles are just special directories, more or less, so you're moving more than just the file, but it presents as a single thing.)…

It's a bit weird to act as if macOS didn't have installers and uninstallers. For one thing, there's the App store. And then, probably most developers use something like homebrew.

What you describe works for a specific kind of app, the ones that can be easily sandboxed and don't have shared dependencies.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#377

Post by devnullbrain »

edaemon wrote: post #357
amelius wrote: post #345

Why do we still need to install stuff? Why can I run webpages just fine without installing anything? Installation shouldn't exist, at least not from the user's point of view.

You had to install a web browser to run those web pages.

Not necessarily

https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#378

Post by kroltan »

koiueo wrote: post #364
threatofrain wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Linux software culture also leaves stuff behind and leaves it up to the assumed system mastery of the user to clean things up.

That's too broad and misleading. Package manager tracks every single file installed by a package, preventing overwrites by other packages. Strict permissions prohibit software from littering all over the place. What are you taking about? Do you want package manager to remove yourb personal data of it was created by an application your decided to remove?

Maybe I do! Many Windows custom uninstallers have an option to remove "settings" while uninstalling.

I sure have lots of junk in ~/.config I don't use anymore and probably never will.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#379

Post by devnullbrain »

Tainnor wrote: post #370
edaemon wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had to install a web browser to run those web pages.

More than that, you have to "install" the code for every webapp that you use at least once (unless it's cached).

How do you differentiate between download and install? Is self-modifying code repeatedly installing itself?

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#380

Post by systems »

mattashii wrote: post #374
marcodiego wrote: post #352

Uninstaller should not exist. Installers should not exist either. Every OS should have a package manager. The name clearly implies what it does: it manages packages; this task should be left to a specialized software, not to the user. Linux distros were pioneers in this aspect and "stores" of the modern world are just a clothed versions of package managers. of course, a power user should should have the right to chan…

> Uninstaller should not exist. Installers should not exist either. Every OS should have a package manager What is a package manager, if not an (un)installer shared between projects?

well you would normally trust the package manager that comes from your OS/Distro provider, as opposed to an uninstalling script from a developer anonymous to you
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