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 cpu-z.install sysinternals 7zip.install zip unzip winmerge gimp notepadplusplus.install vlc windirstat KiTTY CrystalDiskInfo liberica11jdk && choco install libreoffice-still -y -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 -y 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.

Java
Package liberica11jdk 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 OpenJFX, like Java 8 used to do. This package is not the 'full' version and does not include OpenJFX. As far as I know, there is no alternative package.
 * Based on the open-source OpenJDK, without license problems.

Package liberica11jdk 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 -y -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.

Inkscape
I would also install package inkscape, but its update has been broken for many months (as of june 2019), and that annoys you every time you update all packages with the Chocolatey GUI.

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

= 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