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Windows Applications

GNU/Linux and macOS have the concept of a central repository of applications and package managers that can search these repositories, download and install applications, update installed applications when new versions become available, and uninstall applications when they are no longer needed. Debian, Ubuntu and their numerous derivatives use apt. macOS uses brew. Windows has the Microsoft Store, but it has a limited collection of applications and not many of them are Free and Open Source. Note that you can install Python from the Microsoft Store.

There are several tools similar to apt and brew for Windows, and the popular ones are WinGet and Scoop. Once one of these is installed, you can search for and install applications in a way similar to GNU/Linux and macOS. There is a GUI application named UniGetUI that makes it easy to use both winget and scoop.

Beginners would find UniGetUI easy to use as it is a GUI application, can access applications from multiple repositories (winget, scoop, chocolatey and many more) and is available for download from the Microsoft Store.

The rest of this page covers how to install applications on Windows, with a focus on installing uv. The following tools can be used for this purpose:

  1. UniGetUI which uses winget, scoop, chocolatey, pip, npm, PowerShell and a few more. Each of these is a package manager that can be used individually. UniGetUI only provides a GUI on top of these individual tools.
  2. pipx can install and run Python applications in isolated environments so that they are available for use like any other executable.

The individual package managers — such as scoop, winget and chocolatey — each have their own repositories. Some applications may be available from more than one source. For UniGetUI to find applications from multiple sources, the relevant package managers must first be installed.

Installing PowerShell

The current version is PowerShell 7. Please check which version of PowerShell is installed and update if necessary. You can download and install PowerShell 7 from the Microsoft website.

Installing winget

This requires PowerShell, so please ensure you have installed the current version of PowerShell.

Follow the installation instructions to install WinGet.

You can read the help page of WinGet for some of its important commands: 

> winget help
> winget search --help
> winget install --help
> winget list --help
> winget uninstall --help
Here are the commands to search for and install uv: 
> winget search --id astral-sh.uv
Name Id           Version Source
---------------------------------
uv   astral-sh.uv 0.10.8  winget
> winget install astral-sh.uv

Installing scoop

This requires PowerShell, so please ensure you have installed the current version of PowerShell.

Execute the following commands after opening PowerShell: 

> Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
> Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://get.scoop.sh | Invoke-Expression

You can learn to use scoop with the following commands: 

> scoop help
> scoop search

Here are the commands to search for and install uv using scoop: 

> scoop search uv
Results from local buckets...

Name Version Source Binaries
---- ------- ------ --------
uv   0.10.9  main
> scoop install uv