Using protable apps in network on file server

whether you use a network drive, or terminal server, or other method to share the apps.

The problem is that if more than one user uses the same installed copy of a Portable App at the same time, then they are sharing the data and configuration files. While this may not kill every application, it will most certainly cause problems for the more complex ones, such as OpenOffice, or Firefox Portable.

I would suggest that if what you want is to ease installation of updates, then look at something such as, having a network drive where you do a straight install of the apps that you are interested in, but never run them from here.

Then, on each PC that needs to have them useable, do the once-only step of installing a sync app, (something like Syncless would be idea in this case), and configure it to syncronsie just the applicationfolder, not the data ones, from a read-only mount of the fileserver drive onto the local disk.

Then, when a new version comes along, you install it onto the network server, and the sync app will automatically deploy it onto each user's PC, but they will still have a local copy with their own private copy of the data folder, which means that they can all run it at the same time.

Portable apps are for one user. I would recommend using installed apps for a network share situation so that each user has separate settings. The program itself would be installed on the network share and all settings would be saved on each user's user folder on their client machine.

Portable Apps work for me flawlessly on a network share at home since years.

How I do this:
Each user has its own home share on a Linux box running Samba. In each home share there is a directory specific for the portable apps. Also I have put in PStart there and provide a selection menu to each user via PStart. Also PStart is linked to the user's desktop. This way everyone has his own programs, settings and data stored on the server while selection of the programs is made by using PStart instead of the Windows Start Menu. There is very little to be installed directly on the computers now.

It is true: updating the portable apps has to be done for each user separately. But this is not very time consuming. Also it saves me the hassle to install and set up each program on each computer I (re-)install Windows on. I found out that this took me two evenings each time with the variety of programs that are used. Each installed program has to be updated regularly anyways. When the number of computers matches the number of users its basically the same time consumption. Also I can do the updates for the portable apps from one machine for all users.

Also the backup can be done centrally by backing up all shares with programs and data. This can be done during night time. There is nothing important anymore on the computers. Of course you still need to install virus scanners on each machine.

Cheers

Gremlin