Talk:PortableApps.com

This article was nominated for deletion on October 16, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Critisism

Wow. Horrible Article. Time to edit TechOutsider (talk) 22:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider[reply]

Many people find the selection offered small but amazingly good quality —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.205.185 (talk) 22:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've found that the PortableApps.com applications start considerably slower than the official versions, even when not run from a USB-stick. One example of this is VLC Media Player (isn't the official version portable anyway?) 85.76.253.210 (talk) 23:23, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the Criticisms section, the first two criticisms are vague and unsubstantiated. While it says that "there are only a limited number of applications available compared to some other platforms", it does not give an example of these "other platforms". It makes a tangential reference to Ceedo and U3, but after looking at their web sites, they appear to offer fewer applications than PortableApps.com. A reference to support this claim, citing at least one of these "other platforms", would be good.

The second criticism, "Furthermore, some of the applications "released" by PortableApps.com are inherently portable..." is misleading, and also does not provide examples. The definition of a 'portable application' is fairly strict. While an application may be designed to run from a single folder, it may nevertheless leave traces in the user profile on the computer; such an application is not inherently portable by the strict definition, and requires a launcher to corral the application settings in a folder, and to remove any traces at application close.

Finally, both these criticisms use the term "some", which is as vague as the term "it has been said". 148.177.1.210 (talk) 23:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that note about U3 and Ceedo are a bit misleading. First of all U3 has entered its end of life and the pratfor is not open. This makes the platforms incomparable. The mentioning of number of supported applications is fewer than the for example U3 platform seems outdated.

Also many casual users might mention the official version of an given application might be portable as it is been distributed as zip or 'just runs' on any PC they try it on forgo the fact that settings might be left behind in folders and registry on the PC, and new ones will be generated my the application if they are missing. Backing the statement up with one of the few applications that might be completely portable is misleading and might give the readers the impression that any application which just works is 'portable'. (while in fact a not true portable application used from an USB Flash drive might mess up any local installed version if settings are changed, different versions exist and so on because it didn't temporary back up the settings of an local installed version of the application. Its important for readers to understand that when an application might run from an USB Flash drive without apparent problems, it doesn't mean it is 'portable' in a sense that is a PortableApps.com application does.

Also speed issues mentioned ,even when run from local HDD, are arguable due to the fact that yes the starting might take a few milliseconds longer due to the launcher, during use the application should be as fast as regular versions as the app is the same. On closing sometimes the original settings are restored and would take a very short time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.73.45.168 (talk) 20:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've attempted to clarify bits of the criticisms section and change parts where known to be inaccurate. Ryan McCue ^{Let's have a chat} 09:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the VMWare ThinApp reference again. User SF007 added it back in again after I removed it when he mass added it to multiple unrelated articles. VMWare ThinApp is a method of portablizing certain software and, as such, is listed on the portable application article. However, it is unrelated to PortableApps.com, not used with the PortableApps.com Platform and can't be used to package GPL and similarly licensed software (which makes up the majority of PortableApps.com's releases). Thus, it should not be listed as a See Also as it is not an alternative or compatible solution. CritterNYC (talk) 00:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I added it because it is a valid alternative for people that do not want to use portableapps.com, or if they want some software portable, and that software is not at portableapps.com. That's why. SF007 (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The List of apps looks like it's just a copy\paste from here: http://portableapps.com/apps Should it be deleted as plagerism?VJ (talk) 17:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List like that are not copyrighted. Let's not get into copyright paranoia... SF007 (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, what's the point of duplicating it? Why not just put a link to it. Somthing like "a list of apps made portable by portableapps.com can be found here" That way it's also more likely to be up to date and accurate. VJ (talk) 18:47, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now I agree with you in that point. Fine by me. In fact, it is a good idea and I support it. SF007 (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'm going to make the change thenVJ (talk) 08:28, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality

This article is currently very biased. PortableApps.com has received many awards but there's no mention of them, and instead there is a massive "Criticisms" section, which is made up of unsourced and vague statements. Also it's not mentioned who exactly made these criticism (most likely some random user on the forums). So I suggest to either remove the section entirely, or to provide proper sources for it. Laurent (talk) 22:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That criticism section sucked terribly, it had many things that looked like unfunded attacks... SF007 (talk) 01:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Number of downloads

I've reverted a change claiming the number of downloads - this is phrased extremely badly, and is grossly misleading, implying that there's been this number of downloads of the whole portableapps.com package, whereas it's considerably more likely this only refers to the number of applications downloaded. I've rephrased to make this clearer. Machtec (talk) 07:42, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is not misleading. 100 million portable apps have been downloaded (it does not and never said 100 million downloads of the platform). Just the way 1 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded from the App Store. The phrasing is exactly the same. Adding 'individual' is incorrect as some users downloaded multiple apps as part of one of the suites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.247.56.210 (talk) 22:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is misleading, as it can easily be read as meaning the whole portableapps.com bundle - and the word "apps" is poor language in an encyclopedia anyway. I've rephrased to try and make it clearer, and reflect your comment.

Please don't revert this change back without discussing first - if you can phrase it better it may be better to suggest an alternate phrasing first, before trying to start an edit war Machtec (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Then why don't you fix the iPhone App Store article since it is worded in the EXACT same way. If you don't like 'apps' call it applications, even though portable apps is the accepted and industry-standard term for this type of software now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.247.56.210 (talk) 18:57, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ASuite

The ASuite page says that it's based on PStart and the portableapps menu - isn't that the case?

If so, why there should certainly be a link to it! Machtec (talk) 20:29, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The PortableApps has nothing to do with it, probably linking this article to ASuite article is. Antonio López ^(desu) 19:18, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not open source?

Can anyone point me in the direction of the portableapps.com source code?

It seems like it's nowhere to be found on the portableapps.com WWW site! I can find links to the source code for the applications it repackages (i.e. the 3rd party application source code), but none for the menu? Machtec (talk) 20:31, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you ever tried reading the whole page, Go to http://portableapps.com/suite scroll down to where it says source code. If you can't find it, the link is here just scroll until you see source. It's titled "Source (PortableApps.com Plat)" Antonio López ^(desu) 19:18, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did you actually try clicking on that link?

I did notice the link to https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=151265&package_id=225084 in small print (literally!), right at the bottom - however that just redirects to https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/ - which:

Only has a download for the "suite" as a binary (the word "suite" only appears on that page for the executables)
Only has a download for the "platform" as a binary (the word "platform" only appears on that page for the executables)
Doesn't appear to have source for this package
Does have source for quite a number of 3rd party applications

I'm sure portableapps.com must be open source - it's just hard to find. Most open source software programs make it easy to get at their source code, but portableapps.com seems to want people to have to hunt for it!

Machtec (talk) 21:43, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All SourceForge links with package_id=xxxxx are supposed to link to a specific package in a project's releases. Due to a SourceForge redesign, all these links are currently broken and get dumped off at the project's main files page... and portableapp's is massive. It's a known bug that is causing issues for all sourceforge projects and literally hundreds of thousands of websites which will hopefully be fixed soon. The source for the current menu, 2b3, is right here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Source%20(PortableApps.com%20Plat)/PortableApps.com%20Platform%202.0%20Beta%203%20Source/PortableApps.comPlatform2.0Beta3Source.7z/download

Latest Beta

Beta 3 is out, but at the time the article only mentions Beta 1. I would fix it myself, but I don't know the date of Beta 3. Does anyone know when Beta 3 was released? --MoscowModder (talk) 18:15, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done Just added it with the release date. Antonio López ^(desu) 19:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wine support

I added a note about Wine support, which has since been removed (in two steps) by Anyonehere, with the comment "rm useless comment. Most windows software can run under emulation"; however, I think it should be in there. While most software does run under Wine, very few software providers actively support it. At PortableApps.com, we (I'm a developer there) do support Wine officially as far as we can (e.g. [1], [2]), and I know of some users who use our software with Wine (can't provide a number, but over our IRC support we've had a couple of people ask about it (see Google search results for Wine in #portableapps logs)). At least most of our software is tested under Wine, and the PortableApps.com Platform is designed specifically to work in Wine [3] - for example, in the latest official version, 1.5.2, Wine has a shortcoming in that it doesn't handle the BMP transparency in the top corners, and so an alternate theme image is used with square corners rather than rounded. Chris Morgan (talk) 12:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Platform or overall packages?

A good point has been made, there appears to be confusion on the licence, the project overall, the platform, and packages. The Platform itself is open source, but the project recently was marked freeware by other users here. The platform downloads always contain Open source software and so as the suite and light versions, the freeware applications are an optional download, the article should just mention they package freeware, but PortableApps.com does not own the freeware. Antonio López ^(talk) 16:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not notable enough.

Did they themselves write that wiki article in first place? I too can buy a domain and start a supposed 'community' site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.119.161.28 (talk) 21:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It appears it did start in that way if you search the history around 2007, but it quite notable now than it was before. Antonio López ^(talk) 04:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Apps" versus "Applications"

When PortableApps.com started, "apps" was not a generally accepted term, being merely an abbreviation which saw some usage in some areas. However, since then, Apple in particular have made the term "apps" very popular so that now it is an accepted word in the general English vocabulary. I think that now "apps" would be more appropriate than "applications" in most (almost all) places in this article; we do now call them "apps" ourselves exclusively ("applications" was common for us earlier as well). How do others feel about it? Chris Morgan (talk) 12:01, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the redirect from Portableapps to here.

Does the redirect from PortableApps still need to exist? Typing portableapps with any capitalization now leads to this article. Isn't having another redirect from PortableApps redundant? 89.101.247.110 (talk) 12:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No support for Electron Apps. Where are the betas?!

PortableApps used to be this useful repository of open source applications that you could run on a flash drive. But they seemed to have fallen behind the times. For instance, Cmder, which was designed to give ConEmu a new interface leave artifacts in the Windows Registry. There was talk on the PortableApps message board of someone working on that issue, but it hasn't happened. Msys was an alternative to Cygwin which could run on portable devices, unfortunate when Msys2 came out, they redesigned it to be more like Arch Linux. Portable Apps also won't support Electron because the windows version uses Microsoft Virtual Studio Code (MVSC) because the developers wanted to use the Windows toolchain even though the Linux and Mac versions support Clang. Electron also requires Python and Node, none of which Msys2 have been ported to. Because of that, the Atom Editor is not portable. There must be some other source of portable applications other than PortableApps which still seems to prefere the GNU toolchain over Clang because Clan uses a BSD-like license and the PortableApps developers have stated they want to use stuff that uses some form of the GNU license. --Bushido Hacks (talk) 16:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]