Want to have an offline copy of software on Windows? Go download all of the installers from their respective sites. Want it to constantly update - that's gonna be about 100 lines of Python code. And better make sure they're the "offline" installers, not those idiotic stubs that just dl the latest version for a server. Also don't forget about all of the 20 different VC++ runtimes that are sometimes not packaged in the installer.
I have a feeling it would be even harder on macOS.
(all of this is of course ignoring the legal issues of distributing those files - which is generally not an issue on Linux)
All software is most definitely not in one repo. If it were, people wouldn't have to use PPAs or compile from source and deal with all the problems those things cause.
> better make sure they're the "offline" installers, not those idiotic stubs that just dl the latest version for a server
Oh, you mean the ones that aren't just acting like apt.
> I have a feeling it would be even harder on macOS.
Depends, but MacOS software that uses Application Bundles should be fine. Even a lot of Windows software works fine if you just copy the installer contents to a directory. Self-contained application directories (or single files) are an old as dirt concept that Linux communities never got behind, preferring instead to use overly complicated schemes like package management that come with a bunch of their own problems. So many, in fact, that people are now often distributing applications in Docker images.
The way I see it there are 2 different use cases here: 1. You want a few individual apps kept safe on a USB stick in case you need them offline - installers on Win, AppImage on Linux 2. You want a constantly updated cache of the programs you use in case of the apocalypse - pain in the ass on Win, trivial on most Linux
Windows only seems superior here because no. 2 is barely possible, so everyone has gotten good at no. 1.
Oh, if only there were more than a handful of applications on Linux distributed as AppImage, and any support given to them at all by file browsers, life would be so much simpler. Linux community hates desktop so much they completely ignored an embedded ELF icon standard and have consistently poo-pooed every non-repo way of dealing with applications ever.
> You want a constantly updated cache of the programs you use in case of the apocalypse
Why would I want that? So I could discover that something I rely on was broken by a recent update only after I have no ability to do anything about it? Well, lets assume so. On Windows this is relatively simple, just keep a copy of Program Files and most applications will still work fine. It's not ideal, but I'll take it over package managers not even being able to install an application to a different disk.
In some mythical parallel dimension where the Windows system directory, user profile directories and the registry don't exist, sure.
User profile and registry are for settings. You can easily keep backups of those as well, but it isn't really necessary unless you have highly tweaked configurations or something.
Have you not touched Windows since 1995?
Which OS handles this better, in your opinion?