GOG installers are lousy pieces of crap.

It's a huge EXE file, with no transparent install process. You don't know what is written in registry, you don't know what is copied to your system folders.

What GOG needs, is a portable mode, or at least a 7z, Zip, RAR whatever archive version of the installs.
That way, we can install on a USB key and potentially play anywhere we like (read: play on a computer at work, when you don't have admin rights).

GOG wake up please! You're lacking Linux support, at least fill the gap and provide better install processes.

I agree, this i something which most software should have.

Not that you don't have a point, but you make it in about the most obnoxious and whiny way possible.

And by the way, the three most wanted features are:

"Continue to add more 'good' *old* games"
" Bring complete editions (expansion and all DLC included)"
"Add Linux versions of games"

yours are not even on the list... and while it is a good one it is not one I think gog should focus on first...

I would prefer this as well since windows registry can be a pain in the ***, its structure is really lousy sometimes.

Now that I think of it, for some of the smaller games, you can always use Cameyo to install it to it's own directory and not let it touch the main windows anything.

(Not sure if you were mostly commenting to the portable "installer" (or rather, no need for an installation at all?, or that the installers would openly tell all the changes they've done?)

Frankly I never recall seeing a commercial Windows game or application installer which would be fully transparent, telling me all the changes they've made to my system. I think I've always had to use some 3rd party utility that tracks all the changes down for me, back when I still cared enough to try to track them down.

For WinXP I found e.g. this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223300/en-us

or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314852 ?

Is this for Win7 then?

http://superuser.com/questions/180281/what-folder-installation-logs-are-in

(and now I noticed that is apparently only for msi installers?)

I just hope all applications (including GOG games) touch my system as little as possible. I always get a bit uneasy when I see some software trying to install some XP or Win9x era video codec, (gaming) utility or drivers to my Win7 gaming comp. Like recently with some of the Strategy First Super Bundle games which I bought directly from Strategy First. Not always sure if I should let the old games try to clutter my new system with old stuff that does not necessarily work, or will the installers always understand to skip obsolete stuff.

I portablise (not a word?) most programs these days. Registry, appdata, My Documents, ProgramData. Shit gets strewn all over the place for no other reason than to accommodate users that don't have admin rights to their Program Files folder.

You're whiny and full of yourself.

IMO it doesn't get much better than the GOG installers. They are simple and work fine. And apparently uninstalling the games does remove all files. What else do you want?

It occurred to me that this wish is pretty much the opposite of the earlier wishes that GOG DOS games should use one centralized DOSBox installation? I presume such games, which depend on some other common utility to be installed already, can't be very portable?

If I had to choose between the two, I'd certainly prefer fully self-contained, portable installations.

That sounds neat, does it work with GOG installers and any other game where you have installation files?

What happens to the necessary registry files, are they in the portable folder somewhere and how does it work? The idea that all save files and such would fall into one place is neat but they never do for me at least, they do get strewn all over the places somewhere C:\Users\(Usern_name) and it's quite annoying as I like to back up such files just in case.

Logical, yet you have to realize only half of one percent care about such things.

There are different levels of portablisation (making up more words?!). I prefer having the program completely self-contained. There is a single .exe that creates its own folder at its location. This folder contains all the folder trees that the program would have otherwise made on your system, including registry, appdata, etc.

Other options allow the .exe, for example, to virutalise everything except what would go in the My Documents folder. This way the program can be self-contained(ish), but still allow different user accounts to retain individual settings or save games. I think Cameyo allows this. I don't know whether they will let you portablise your games, however. No harm in trying!

I use Spoon Studio (not free, not cheap) because it also allows embedding of dependent programs. EG, JDownloader runs on Java, but I can have it run on a system that doesn't have Java installed. My particular favourite is to have .NET 4.0 included as I don't like having it installed on my system all the time for just one or two programs.

I'd rather they optimized the installers for Vista and Windows 7. Currently, the larger games that aren't broken into .bin files take forever to install.