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Discussion on: Setting up my new Machine

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iainfreestone profile image
Iain Freestone

I love getting a new machine but dread the setting up part it always takes a while to feel "just right" again.

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cubiclesocial profile image
cubiclesocial

I use portable apps for just about everything except for software that doesn't have a "portable" flavor available. Usually requires hunting for a ZIP/tar.gz file instead of a formal installer.

Portable apps let you "install" an isolated copy of software to a secondary drive. They were originally designed for use on USB thumbdrives, but I put them onto a SSD. The main OS goes on one SSD and my data and portable applications go onto a second SSD. All settings and application data travel with the second drive. Makes reinstalling the OS and switching machines much, much easier, safer, and faster. Doing things like setting the default web browser to point at a portable version can be a tad tricky and require manual intervention (e.g. editing the registry on Windows) because those sort of OS level features tend to make incorrect assumptions about software applications.

Before portable apps, reinstalling the OS took about 2 weeks to achieve normalcy. With portable apps, my last OS reinstall + a few select apps took about 1 day of lost productivity. Nothing goes on the OS drive except temporary data I won't mind losing, the OS (of course), and apps that just have to be installed (e.g. Visual Studio). Everything else goes on the second drive.

Portable apps are self-contained. That means no registry settings, no funky directory layouts, no shell extensions that slow the machine down, no monkeying with system PATHs, etc. My computer runs almost as fast as if it had no software installed on it because, from the OS' perspective, there isn't much of anything installed on it. You didn't hear this from me but [glances sideways] portable apps are also useful for bypassing corporate IT restrictions regarding installed software to use your favorite tools.

Once you use portable apps and understand how incredibly powerful the concept is, you'll be annoyed at any software company (mostly Microsoft) that only releases packaged installer versions of their software.

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cblte profile image
cblte

I do either choco install or brew install.
Have scripts for all of them. After installation of OS run. That’s it.
Portable apps are nice but not really needed. Who wants to keep his browser cache anyway. Hahah 😜

The thing with corporate is nice, but if you bypass security you might get fired. And if you are able to run software outside programs dir, you have not one of the smartest admins or security guys.
Group policies for the win!

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