31–40 of 73 posts
the installation story for devs writing windows apps has been dreadful for 3 decades. vs used to help you build setup.exe, which was always a huge chore to use. clickonce was launched to replace all this with hosted manifests and auto-updates and modern features like that, and immediately forgotten about because it was so broken. nobody ever used it. then they brought out WinUI and the windows store, which was so ove…
Not to mention the need for a code signing certificate, which even in 2026 is a gigantic and expensive hassle to obtain. You can spend weeks of effort and hundreds of dollars just to ship an installable hello world app these days. The MS store takes care of signing, but there are other trade-offs. The entire desktop TTHW (time to installable hello world) story is horrible across the board: - Win: Decent tech foundati…
Bob wants a deb. I give him a deb. Bob is not happy because I compiled the software with an incompatible glibc. I deploy a webapp for Bob. Alice gets to use it too.
the installation story for devs writing windows apps has been dreadful for 3 decades. vs used to help you build setup.exe, which was always a huge chore to use. clickonce was launched to replace all this with hosted manifests and auto-updates and modern features like that, and immediately forgotten about because it was so broken. nobody ever used it. then they brought out WinUI and the windows store, which was so ove…
On startup, if not already there, it automagically copied itself to the installation directory, created an autostart directory link and started it from the new location and got killed with a named pipe command. It contained and extracted another .exe that was continuously checking for new versions, downloading them and starting them.
As malwary as it gets but it worked flawlessly!
The windows store nightmare that came after looks dreadful.
Seriously who needs a Store App on a desktop OS? The process should be as simple as visiting app’s website, optionally paying, and installing. No middle man, hence less point of breakage.
Well, the rest of the world (outside of MacOS and Windows) settled on repositories and package managers, with hash verification, versioning, updating/installing/uninstalling with composable commands (that can also be used via GUIs), etc. Use Fedora for half a year and tell me what you prefer.
I like the "one consistent system with one dependency tree" policy of Debian et al, but with flatpack, appimage, snap, etc. the "application" part of software might prefer the Windows/MacOS model.
This is why no one jumps onboard with new stuff Microsoft wants to push. They don’t stick to anything. A dev can constantly chase after Microsoft’s latest pet projects, or they can simply ignore all of it, knowing it will eventually fall out of fashion and save themselves (and their users) a lot of trouble.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention the need for a code signing certificate, which even in 2026 is a gigantic and expensive hassle to obtain. You can spend weeks of effort and hundreds of dollars just to ship an installable hello world app these days. The MS store takes care of signing, but there are other trade-offs. The entire desktop TTHW (time to installable hello world) story is horrible across the board: - Win: Decent tech foundati…
> No consensus on how to package. Bob wants a .deb, Bob wants a deb. I give him a deb. Bob is not happy because I compiled the software with an incompatible glibc. I deploy a webapp for Bob. Alice gets to use it too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention the need for a code signing certificate, which even in 2026 is a gigantic and expensive hassle to obtain. You can spend weeks of effort and hundreds of dollars just to ship an installable hello world app these days. The MS store takes care of signing, but there are other trade-offs. The entire desktop TTHW (time to installable hello world) story is horrible across the board: - Win: Decent tech foundati…
> No consensus on how to package. Bob wants a .deb, Bob wants a deb. I give him a deb. Bob is not happy because I compiled the software with an incompatible glibc. I deploy a webapp for Bob. Alice gets to use it too.
Seriously who needs a Store App on a desktop OS? The process should be as simple as visiting app’s website, optionally paying, and installing. No middle man, hence less point of breakage.
I like the idea. A single place to search for common apps, that also keep them updated. I don't want to download the .exe again and again with ever update. Just do that in the background please.
Though I mostly use WinGet, but it's sadly not as user friendly as apt.
the installation story for devs writing windows apps has been dreadful for 3 decades. vs used to help you build setup.exe, which was always a huge chore to use. clickonce was launched to replace all this with hosted manifests and auto-updates and modern features like that, and immediately forgotten about because it was so broken. nobody ever used it. then they brought out WinUI and the windows store, which was so ove…
> vs used to help you build setup.exe, which was always a huge chore to use. Was it... REALLY though? Everyone knew how to use the setup wizards.
I'm glad that after windows 10, you can finally install most software as NOT ADMIN via disabling(!) UAC completely :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> vs used to help you build setup.exe, which was always a huge chore to use. Was it... REALLY though? Everyone knew how to use the setup wizards.
i think it's telling that Nullsoft created their own installer for WinAmp and its still 20 years later one of the most sane and popular ways of distributing apps.