Have you ever used “apt”, or “rpm” under some flavor of Linux? O a portage system?

In case you didn’t, I’ll explain briefly what’s the purpose of a Package Management System.

A package management system is a solution that allows the automatic search, location, download (or retrieval from other media) and installation (or upgrade) of software.

Often, a PMS goes in pair with a Dependency Resolution solution, that allows to detect packages that are necessary to run the desired program and download and install them accordingly.

Believe me, once you get used to the idea, it’s hard to go back to regular “installations”, if not for special purposes.

Now, it’d be great if such a tool existed for Windows, as we all have to deal with that pain in the ass operating system every now and then.

win-get (http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/index.php) gets at least *part* of the job done

say you want the latest version of firefox: you just fire up your “run” dialog, or command prompt and command:

win-get install firefox

No, it won’t check for upgrades, see if you need other dependencies, or aid in the removal of the application, but it does download the installer of the latest version and fire it up for you to install, saving you the hassle of opening the browser, look for the program page, and dowload the installer.

It has in catalog most of the free (at least as in “free beer”, but also many free programs, free as in “free speech”) programs you might need, firefox, tunderbird, alchool…you name it, it’s probably there.

Go get your free win-get copy (and the wget utility it uses to download the programs) at the link above and slam them in your c:\windows for easy running from the run dialog.

I’m not encouraging anyone to keep using windows if frustrated by it lacks of feature, but as many of us must stick with it, let’s try to minimize the hassle!

Got any other trick to survive Windows mediocrity? Let me know in the comments!

Stay tuned, more to come.

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