winPenPack - portable wrapper and distribution

[JackL]

Hi,
Have you tried x-software from http://www.winpenpack.com?
I found their firefox, openoffice, gimp, inkscape and vlc much more responsive than "portable..." version.
only problem sometimes is ...the language - hey, maybe there is some bilang guys to help in eng version of some tutorials on their website?
Looking for your conclusions

[ekin_116]

The site is in Italian, but is the X-Software written in english?

[Fluffy]

The X-Software is in English unless there is an ITA after the title. That would stand for ITAlian. Simply looking at the downloads will give you that much information. Though, this is not always the case - if the text is all Italian chances are the app is too (just noticed this about YzDock). Lingua will also indicate the languages available.

[Darkbee]

I personally don't see the point in winpenpack.... its just somebody's else collection of portable freeware... I already have my own collection of portable freeware that covers about 95% of my needs and by building up my own collection I can be sure that I don't have any superfluous applications.

[Taf]

Hallo Darkbee...
I'm part of the staff in WPP project.
Somehow I'm agree with You, non all softwarespresent in WinPenPack suites are necessary.
But You have also the possibility to create your own pensuite with launcher and personalized menu.
Here is our "how to" in english
http://www.winpenpack.com/main/index.ph ... winPenPack

by the way... i'm involved (with my poor english) to complete site translation in english.
Would be very helpful if someone can check my translations (already done) and suggest corrections and/or improvements.

TIA to everyone can help me!

[lajjal]

I am curious about the sparse mention of winPenPack here (nothing more than 7 asides buried in program descriptions). Although their stuff is a bit slower because of the environment they use, they have a lot of portable apps and a few found nowhere else. Is there something I don't know about their operation or perhaps a feud of some kind. The nice thing about winPenPack is the ease of program updating, just one click.

[ashghost]

As I see it, there are 2 minimal biases at work here:

• Only individual apps are listed in TPFC - There are several collections of portable apps out there (WinPenPack.com's "WinPenPack", PortableApps.com's "Suite", theinfobox.com's "Collection"), but they don't really fit in a database of single applications. The focus here is on getting just what you want and keeping things small.
  
  When an application has an official portable release, that will be referenced by the "Download" link - additional releases that rely on registry wrappers (in this case, the x-launcher) may (or may not be) noted in the TPFC descrption.

I used Google to search www.portablefreeware.com for "X", and found at least 2 WinPenPack apps that have their own database entries because they're the only portable versions of those apps:

• X-Inkscape: http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=657
  X-Solfege: http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1100

So, if there are any other apps in the WinPenPack that aren't already in TPFC, go ahead and submit 'em!

By the way, I downloaded ALL three of the collections I referenced above when I first got interested in having lots of portable apps. By the time I deleted all of the inferior apps that duplicated functionality and the apps that unnecessarily used a registry wrapper, it might have been more trouble than it was worth.

Cheers,

Joe

[lajjal]

Actually any of the 221 apps at winPenPack can stand alone just fine. They need a couple of empty folders setup to work properly. I never expected that the collections (which are kind of useless) would be listed here. I don't have the time to cross reference and give a list of apps unique to winPenPack but it's a lot more than 2. X-TightVNC is one that came up the other day in a different thread.

[ashghost]

I wasn't saying they don't run portably. I'm not sure how their wrapper works, whether it allows the app to write to the registry (like Haller's PortableApps do) and then cleans up after it when you exit the app, or if it somehow redirects the registry and filesystem writes to the specified subfolders. Either way, it's slightly more overhead than using an executable from the original developer that natively saves its settings to a text file in its own folder - which is why, as you said, they're slower. Also, with Haller's method comes the risk that if the app crashes, you'll lose data (and leave it in the registry of the machine you're working on).

By offering the 2 examples I found, I was just pointing out that they aren't excluded from having their own entries.

The fact that all of those apps aren't listed is the other "bias" that I didn't mention - it's a lot of work! You don't even want to make a list, much less write up a description for each and get a screenshot and test for unicode support and OS support.

TPFC is Andrew Lee's website, and he updates the database on his time. Check out the "about" and "faq" pages (especially "In what order do you process freeware submissions?" on the faq - though I don't think he even looks at "4 to 5 apps a day" anymore).

So if there are WinPenPack apps that you absolutely love and they're not in the database, perhaps you want to submit those at least? Write a description (or copy from the WinPenPack description or the original developer's description), include a link to a screenshot, include a link to the webpage and a download link.

[lajjal]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I absolutely appreciate the venue provided here and I'm sure it was a ton of work to start and a ton of work to maintain. I wasn't trying to be critical more than just musing about why more entries of winPenPack stuff had not crept in over time. Thanks for pointing out the 2 entries for Inkscape and Solfege since I missed those. By the way, you are right about the registry, they use a fake one. I also agree that Haller's approach is not a good one but it does let him do some things others can't (including winPenPack) like do a portable version of the latest Gnucash.

[Queue]

Also, with Haller's method comes the risk that if the app crashes, you'll lose data (and leave it in the registry of the machine you're working on).

This isn't exactly accurate yet I hear it really often so I want to clear something up.

Stuff will only be left in the registry if the wrapper crashes, not the program that has been portable-ized. This practically has a zero chance of occuring (the wrapper crashing I mean). If the main program crashes, the registry wrapper will clean up the registry the same as if the main program had been closed normally.

Also, most times a program crashes you'll lose data unless it has some sort of auto-saving feature.

In other words, basically the only time the quoted statement is true is if the OS itself crashes. Even then, simply running the wrapped program again then closing it will get everything back to how it should be. Not as perfect as something that redirects registry calls entirely (or a natively portable program), but it's not an end-of-the-world scenario and not nearly as risky as the quoted statement makes it out to be.

Queue

[ashghost]

I suppose that oughta teach me to just repeat what I've read in forums. I've never been worried about that happening anyway (how often do mature open source apps crash?), so I shouldn't have echoed it just to try to make a point.

[lajjal]

Not using the registry at all is always safer.

[webfork]

Oddly, although the software doesn't appear to have been mentioned directly here on forums, WinPenPack's menu system has gone dotNET. I'm very confused by this move, but they seem to think the benefits outweigh the loss of portability.

[joby_toss]

This is unbelievable!
This move is the end of WinPenPack's menu, in my opinion!
Sabotage?