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 --yes chocolateygui choco-cleaner cpu-z.install 7zip.install zip unzip winmerge gimp notepadplusplus.install vlc windirstat KiTTY CrystalDiskInfo inkscape && choco install libreoffice-still --yes -ia "QUICKSTART=0"

With the options above, 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".

On Windows 7 (the terminal application on Windows 10 resizes better):

choco install --yes ConEmu

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.

choco-cleaner
choco-cleaner is probably a must-have package, because the free Chocolatey version never clears the download cache. It should automatically run from a scheduled task, but you can always manually run it from an elevated console:

choco-cleaner

In case you still keep old Windows 7 computers around, it only seems to run on newer Windows versions.

Java
Package liberica11jdkfull from BellSoft is the only Java installer I found so far with the following features:
 * Java version 11, which is both modern Java and a long-term support version.
 * Reasonably up-to-date package with automatic updates thanks to Chocolatey.
 * Includes JavaFX/OpenJFX, like Java 8 used to do.
 * Based on the open-source OpenJDK, without license problems.

Package liberica11jdkfull is the 64-bit version. Unfortunately, there is no 32-bit version, so you are out of luck if you are running the 32-bit version of Windows.

TightVNC
I would install TightVNC like this:

choco install tightvnc --yes -ia "SERVER_REGISTER_AS_SERVICE=0 SET_ACCEPTRFBCONNECTIONS=1 VALUE_OF_ACCEPTRFBCONNECTIONS=0"

With the options 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.

I have stopped installing TightVNC because I noticed that upgrading to version 2.8.23 automatically registered the TightVNC service. The associated taskbar icon shows then every time. I asked a question about this on TightVNC's mailing list, with a timestamp of 2019-08-28 07:36:54, but I have got no answer yet.

Packages for Development or Special PCs Only
choco install --yes wireshark winscp.install sysinternals

= 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. Unfortunately, it does have the tendency to pause when a package fails to upgrade until you acknowledge the failed package. Upgrade failures happen relative often, because a URL recently changed, or the web site is down at the moment. Apparently, the Chocolatey GUI can also upgrade itself even if it is running, which is generally a problematic thing to attempt. 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 --yes