Scoop is a simply great command-line package manager for Windows
Installing software on Linux, if you are comfortable with the command line, is a breeze, thanks to the distribution-provided package manager.
On Debian you get apt, on Arch you get pacman, and on Alpine you get apk. Installing anything is as simple as:
apt install {package name}
pacman -S {package name}
apk add {package name}
Shortly after that, the software you have requested is ready to use.
The other frequent flow that is also improved is ensuring all the software on your computer is updated to the respective latest versions, which is a must for any computer exposed to the Internet.
apt update && apt upgrade -y pacman -Suy apk update && apk upgrade --available
There you go. Your all the software on your computer is up to date and you can throw in a reboot if you'd like (although not required).
Scoop aims to provide that same experience on Windows.
Their online repository at http://scoop.sh has plenty of popular command-line and graphical software that covers virtually everything you are going to install.
Installing something is as simple as:
scoop install {package name}
Most of the time it won't even need administrator privileges, as it defaults to install the portable version of software, which is almost always available.
Updating every software (installed through Scoop) is also pretty simple:
scoop update --available
Just imagine a pain it would be if you had, say, 10 software packages to install, to fetch the installer from each of the first-party websites and go through each installation wizard. This is not even taking into account updating.
Scoop makes it dead simple.
A more popular alternative is Chocolatey, which aims to solve the same problem. But Chocolatey looks like “a real company” with a pricing page, while Scoop looks mostly simply volunteer-driven and has fulfilled every need I had for the last 3 months now.
Here are the packages I have installed on my personal machine:
> scoop list Installed apps: Name Version Source Updated Info ---- ------- ------ ------- ---- 7zip 23.01 main 2023-08-13 18:09:26 balabolka 2.15.0.854 extras 2023-09-19 05:51:01 clink 1.5.6 main 2023-09-21 21:33:40 git 2.42.0.2 main 2023-09-01 13:39:44 grep 3.11 main 2023-09-09 20:04:32 less 643 main 2023-08-21 02:10:52 make 4.4.1 main 2023-07-20 13:23:59 openssh 9.2.2.0p1 main 2023-07-17 18:51:31 python 3.11.5 main 2023-08-27 13:40:09 sqlite 3.43.1 main 2023-09-12 19:41:49 uutils-coreutils 0.0.21 main 2023-09-08 09:11:34 vim 9.0 main 2023-07-18 07:54:22 vlc 3.0.18 extras 2023-09-10 20:32:43 vscode 1.82.2 extras 2023-09-15 10:30:01 wget 1.21.4 main 2023-09-12 22:29:29 wiztree 4.15 extras 2023-08-21 04:08:03
It can even install the font I use for all my console windows, JetBrains Mono NL.
I think the only pieces of software I did decide to install “manually” (that is, by downloading the installer and going through the wizard) were Firefox and SumatraPDF, as even though Scoop is able to install those, having the portable versions set as the default application didn't play well with Windows.