In the Linux world, package managers are an established way to download and install software. On Windows, package managers are still new for many.
If you are a Windows system administrator and would like to download and install standard software packages for all users, then “Chocolatey” would be a premier choice. This package manager works best with full Administrator privileges and installs software using their default installation packages.
Note: To be able to run scripts and download code, as a prerequisite you may have to run these lines:
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12 Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
To install Chocolatey, run the following line in PowerShell:
Invoke-RestMethod -UseBasicParsing -Uri 'https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1' | Invoke-Expression
After the installation succeeded, there is a new command called choco that you now can use to download and install software.
For example, if you’d like to install PowerShell 7 for all users, run this:
choco install powershell-core