If you want to make your experience with Windows a more fulfilling experience, then you really need to install the Chocolatey package manager. This package manager for Windows will make installing the programs you need, easier, and give you an experience that is similar to having a package manager that you would find on Mac and Linux.
This is actually a pretty easy process that you can view on the Chocolatey site, but we will quickly run through it here.
Open a command line window as administrator.
Then install Chocolatey using the Windows command line prompt using the following command.
@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
Once your setup is complete you are ready to go. Give it a try by installing git or installing nodejs on your Windows computer using choco install nodejs.
If you would prefer a visual experience for Chocolatey packages, you can also install a GUI for Chocolatey using the package manager command choco install chocolateygui.
Now that you have that installed you can now quickly install packages for your windows computer. Happy Windows-ing!
If you’re looking for more of my general thoughts on Windows with a package manager, please see my other article on this subject.
https://medium.com/@JockDaRock/using-windows-do-yourself-a-favor-and-install-chocolatey-6b01e0ab2715
