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Download Page: Prioritize 'Official Binaries for Manual Download' Over 'Supported Platforms' #2054

Open diegozea opened 7 months ago

diegozea commented 7 months ago

Problem: The current placement of the "Supported Platforms" section before "Official Binaries for Manual Download" in the Julia installation guide complicates installation for users in environments that restrict access to the Windows Store or similar services. This layout necessitates unnecessary navigation, hindering accessibility.

Solution: Reorganize the installation guide to list "Official Binaries for Manual Download" before the "Supported Platforms" section. This change will make manual download options more visible and accessible, streamlining the installation process for users facing institutional restrictions.

Additional Context: In many academic and corporate settings, security policies limit the use of platform-specific stores for software installation. Prioritizing manual download options can significantly improve accessibility and user experience for those in such environments.

KristofferC commented 7 months ago

I think it is enough to also link to the MSIX installer on the Windows download page (which AFAIU should work even in this settings)?

diegozea commented 7 months ago

I think that should also work; I could test it if you provide me a link to such an installer. For the moment, I am using the .exe installer: julia-1.10.1-win64.exe

KristofferC commented 7 months ago

https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup?tab=readme-ov-file#windows

If the Windows Store is blocked on a system, we have an alternative MSIX App Installer based setup. Note that this is currently experimental, please report back successes and failures https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup/issues/343. To use the App Installer version, download this file and open it by double clicking on it.

If neither the Windows Store nor the App Installer version work on your Windows system, you can also use a MSI based installer. Note that this installation methods comes with serious limitations and is generally not recommended unless no other method works. For example, there is no automatic update mechanism for Juliaup with this installation method. The 64 bit version of the MSI installer can be downloaded from here and the 32 bit version from here. By default the install will be a per-user install that does not require elevation. You can also do a system install by running the following command from a shell:

diegozea commented 7 months ago

The .appinstaller there fails with the following error:

App installation failed with error message: error 0x80D03002: Opening the package from location Julia-1.14.5.0.appxbundle failed. (0x80d03002)

Then, the MSI installer works fine, but, strangely, you need to execute Julia a first time from the Windows menu to have Julia later downloaded, installed, and on the path—in comparison with the .exe installer that does all that before the first call to Julia.

ViralBShah commented 1 month ago

Looking at things again, I feel that the binaries should come before the supported platforms too.

That is how things used to be - and I wonder which PR changed the order and perhaps there was a rationale for that.

IanButterworth commented 1 month ago

It was reordered in https://github.com/JuliaLang/www.julialang.org/pull/2001

KristofferC commented 1 month ago

Yep, I agree, better before.