I am very interested in how gog makes their Linux installers. They work exactly like .exe even to the point where you are asked where you want things to go. I wish more programs could be installed this way. I for one don't like using repositories to install programs.

It’s in a comment in the header. They use to create self-extracting compressed archives that appear as a shell script to the user, the GUI for the installation is handled by [url=https://icculus.org/mojosetup/]MojoSetup.

Could you use this to make installers for programs from the repository?

What is it that you don’t like about ‘repositories’? The use of the command prompt? The management of dependencies? The inflexibility of the installation?

<span class="bold">Obligatory ICP reference</span>.

Many people like the Mac style. No installation needed, just a simple drag and drop.
Some portable software also work this style, like Firefox portable.

All of the above. I have written scripts to do A I'd like to learn how to do B.

Gotta love that portable software. I suspect though that has a lot to do with how MAC OS is set up. I find that portable apps don't tend to work as well as apps you install. They don't integrate as well with the OS if that makes any sense.

:O Those are some serous programing skills. I'll look into it though :P

It is much less technical than it is conventional. Unix and Linux systems have a directory structure to which they strictly adhere and they like to put files where they belong according to this structure. Package managers can follow this model neatly, which is why they are so mainstream there. Apple chose user convenience over this developer convention.

It does seem that Linux systems are starting to get comfortable with the idea of embracing alternatives. Gnome 3 now has its own app store with easy installation and Ubuntu 16 supports “snap” packages that manage their own dependencies.

How does GOG manage to set their packages so that you're able to change the directory?

Where do you get snap packages from and can they work with Mint?

It's an executable installer, and thus it's able to do pretty much whatever the fuck it wants, as long as it's being run by a user with sufficient permissions, not a package handled by a central manager.

GOG could just as well have a simple archive for the user to unpack wherever they like. In fact, they did have targz archives earlier, as well as deb packages for Debian-based distributions, but eventually they decided that a mojo installer was more user friendly and less error prone by not requiring an admin password to install.

Snap packages should work just about everywhere, provided you have the base requirements, and the idea is that a developer should be able to host their packages on their own site rather than being required to submit it to a central "store" or setting up their own repository (which the user would have to add/enable), but one place to get them is uappexplorer.com (for some reason, the page doesn't show anything in Pale Moon, though Firefox and Chromium seem to work fine),

Repositories are the biggest hurdle for me when it comes to Linux. If Snap because more common Linux might be a more viable option.