^[1]Are you a fan of Linux, and its incredibly easy to use Terminal-based package management? Installing programs on Linux is as easy as a single command. With Chocolatey, you can bring that easy installation to your Windows computer.

With Chocolatey, you just run a few commands:

• clist [program name]. This searches for an app, and lists all packages that match the search term.
• cinst [packagename]. This installs a package, such as any returned by clist.
• cuninst [packagename]. This uninstalls programs.
• More! You can view the complete reference on Github ^[2].

There are currently 368 packages on Chocolatey. You can install anything from Chocolatey updates to 7-zip, and anything in between. While it’s still mostly developer-centric apps, Chocolatey has a healthy collection, and its bringing something similar to apt-get to Windows is quite nice.

To install Chocolatey, just open up a Command Prompt and run this command:

C:\> @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('http://bit.ly/psChocInstall'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%systemdrive%\chocolatey\bin

Price: Free!

Version Discovered: v0.9.8.19

Supported OS: Windows unknown

Download size: unknown

VirusTotal malware scan results: N/A — no “installer”

Portability: Requires installation

Chocolatey homepage ^[3]

[via Lifehacker ^[4]]