Ask HN: Why can't we uninstall multiple apps at once on any OS?

2 points by FahadUddin92 7 years ago | 4 comments

I have tried uninstalling multiple projects on Windows and Android. It only allows one uninstall at a time. Why so? Can't there be parallel processing for uninstall?

db48x 7 years ago |

Installing or uninstalling something might have arbitrary side effects, especially on Windows. Its harder to reason about things that happen in parallel, and since uninstalling things is relatively uncommon, there's little need to spend the effort to make it reliable.

Of course, there's little reason to make the user choose only one thing to uninstall at a time. On Linux you can specify a list of things to uninstall, and the package manager will uninstall everything on the list without further input from the user.

Of course, it'll still be serialized, but that doesn't matter much when the computer is doing all the work.

spdebbarma 7 years ago |

Windows has a wonderful application called Bulk Crap Uninstaller, also better known as BC Uninstaller.

It has an amazing feature to 'silently' uninstall a set of applications on your system. After which it also checks for any files that might have stayed back in the system and deletes them all.

I just hope we get a similar alternative for Android, but I have a hunch such an application might already exist on F-droid.

zzo38computer 7 years ago |

You can uninstall multiple things at once on Linux, at least with Debian package manager (although I don't know if it can actually execute in parallel, but you can select everything to uninstall and then it will uninstall them in a batch operation).

navjack27 7 years ago |

You... Can install multiple things in Windows at once... You can also uninstall multiple things at once... Just find the uninstaller exe and run em all at once.