People will type nvidia drivers in a search engine or, worse, in a file sharing service (I’ve seen that), download the very first thing that shows up, and execute the binary without a second thought. Plus it is risky if you don’t pay attention to where you are downloading those executables from.

Having to visit arbitrary web sites to download installers and going through their snowflake wizards one by one is time consuming. Software distribution has changed quite a bit with commonplace broadband connections, but the mess of custom installers remains. A fairly typical installation program from the days of Windows 3.x. Take a look at just one example: Microsoft Word 6.0 Setup touting the AutoFormat feature while it copies files. Such software was very slow to install, so the vendors used the installer’s screen space to hype up ther product features. The reason, I think, is simple: most Windows software was distributed via physical media (floppies, CDs and DVDs) and most of it was commercial. Installing software on Windows has typically been a very different experience than what you get in a typical Linux or BSD system. Can you believe that Windows ships with something that looks like a package manager? By default since Windows 11? I know, right? Let’s take a look.

Chocolatey install windows 10