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If you are one of those install manager peddlers who came here to see what this article is about or if you are a developer considering including an install manager with your application let me tell you upfront — fuck you and your install manager.

With that out of the way, let me tell you why you too should refuse installing any application that comes with its own install manager and why you should send your fuck you's to the developers adding them to their products.

Back in the day, using applications was simple. You download an .exe or a .zip, put or extract it into a folder of your choice, and double-click on it to run it when you want to use it. Same was with games, you would install it from a CD or DVD and run it offline whenever you wanted to play.

Fast-forward to today and:

You see a pattern here? Once your patience with that shit is exhausted it is really tempting to let everything auto-update so you don't have to deal with it. After all, everyone says updating is good for security and stability.

That is, if you trust that they won't fuck up their installer (like Notepad++ did up until version 8.8.9 by not checking intergrity or authenticity of its updates), or update contents (like Crowdstrike did with faulty configuration update which sent 8.5 million PCs into a boot loop), and that their infrastructure serving those updates doesn't get compromised (like Notepad++'s did between June 2025 and December 2025).

Examples of supply chain compromises and update infrastructure hacks are aplenty and even if you are not a developer you will do yourself a favor if you stay abreast of the developments in that area.

So how did I avoid the risk of malware getting installed by Notepad++ auto-updater on my PC? Simply by having it off as I do for all auto-updaters nowadays, and by avoiding install managers like a bubonic plague they are.

Those install managers and auto-updaters are a security and stability risk. If you can trust developers to write a text editor, or a digital store front, or even a whole language, that doesn't mean you can or should trust them to write an install manager.

At this point you are surely asking yourself why you shouldn't trust them and the answer is really simple — most applications you install don't need administrative rights while running while all install managers do.

Most of those install managers want to run at all times which means they add scheduled tasks and background services which run with NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privileges.

So not only they waste your PC resources by constantly eating CPU cycles and RAM to check for updates, they also:

So what are you waiting for? Go uninstall and disable them all, manually update your shit from now on after vetting each update you download, and tell everyone who wants to trojanize your PC with their install manager to FUCK RIGHT OFF.