My Chocolatey Notes for Windows

= Installing Packages =

This is the command to install my favourite Chocolatey packages on Windows. Remember to run it inside a console with elevated privileges:

choco install -y chocolateygui jre8 cpu-z.install sysinternals 7zip.install zip unzip winmerge ConEmu gimp notepadplusplus.install vlc windirstat winscp.install InkScape KiTTY CrystalDiskInfo && choco install libreoffice-fresh -y -ia "QUICKSTART=0" && choco install tightvnc -y -ia "SERVER_REGISTER_AS_SERVICE=0 SET_ACCEPTRFBCONNECTIONS=1 VALUE_OF_ACCEPTRFBCONNECTIONS=0"

I would install libreoffice-still rather than libreoffice-fresh, but the 'still' package has been broken for months and the behaviour of the package maintainer (alias 'wget') has disappointed me, see the discussion dated 03.06.2019 under that package. I reported the issue to the Chocolatey admins too, but the answer has also been disappointing. The result is a broken package that is not unmistakably marked as broken when browsing the package repository. The package spits out a non-obvious error message in the rather verbose console text. Existing installations will not upgrade either. This is all very annoying, as LibreOffice's long-standing auto-update shortcomings, resulting in mostly very outdated LibreOffice versions among most non-advanced users, are actually the reason why I tried Chocolatey in the first place. May this example serve as a warning that Chocolatey and LibreOffice are not very professional organisations to be relied upon.

Chocolatey will unfortunately add desktop icons for some of the applications during installation, which you may want to manually remove afterwards. I haven't found the time yet to try and disable such automatic desktop icon creation. This is annoying to many users which like to keep their desktop icons tidy.

By default, Chocolatey installs package information in %ProgramData%\chocolatey\lib (aka %ChocolateyInstall%\lib). Some of the executables actually land there, others are installed to their usual places under C:\Program Files etc. Chocolatey creates shims in %ProgramData%\chocolatey\bin (aka %ChocolateyInstall%\bin) for many of the executables installed. A shim is a small wrapper that acts like a symbolic link. That shim directory is normally on your PATH. One drawback with shims is that they tend to be marked as console applications, so opening a GUI application like Notepad++ over its shim opens a console window for a short time before the real application starts. I find that annoying.

Notes about the packages above:
 * TightVNC is not installed as a service. The application-mode server does not accept any incoming connections by default. The user is expected to manually start the TightVNC server and manually connect a listening client.
 * LibreOffice is installed without the start-up loading option. This is equivalent to manually clearing this setting: Settings/Einstellungen -> Memory/Speicher -> "Load LibreOffice during system start-up"/"LibreOffice beim Systemstart laden".

Packages for Development PCs Only
choco install -y wireshark jdk8

= Upgrading Packages =

You should set an automatic reminder in your calendar, so that you do not forget to upgrade all packages every now and then.

The Chocolatey GUI is the most comfortable way to upgrade any installed packages, especially for non-technical users.

Apparently, the Chocolatey GUI can upgrade itself, which is generally problematic. I could not actually find any documentation about how it does that, but it seems to work.

Otherwise, this is how to upgrade all packages from the command line. Beware not to run this command inside a ConEmu terminal, because ConEmu itself gets upgraded too. And remember that it needs a console with elevated privileges:

choco upgrade all -y