ELI5- Why do I have to install a programm on a computer. Why can’t I just use it as I download the file or boot it from the disc?
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You can, with some.
Also, some programs installations are pretty much just a decompressing. You could copy the “installed” files to another computer and it would work fine.
But some programs need to (simplistic put)change specific configurations on your computer to work. So before you can use it the installation will make those changes, and then the program will work. Moving the files to another computer wouldn’t work as the new computer wouldn’t have the necessary changes
Some programs can be used just like that. However, most programs you do have to install. One reason is that the program is compressed. The installer is much smaller than the actual program, which saves a lot of space. In addition, the program will interact with parts of your operating system, so that all needs to be configured. If you want to have start menu shortcuts, context menu integration, notifications etc those things require the program to be integrated into your operating system. There are many services like that of the OS the program needs to know, such as services that help it communicate over the internet, read and write files on your hard disk. Those are things that the program can not do without the help of the OS.
Booting a program from just one file or from a disk means that anything the program might possibly want, it needs to have packed up with it.
When you go on a vacation or holiday, you probably take a bag with you with some things you might need. It can let you do some essential things, but not quite as many things as you could probably do if you had access to everything you had laying around in your home. You *could* just pack a bigger bag and take more of it with you, but at some point it just becomes too cumbersome to lug around, so it’s not worth it.
On top of that, even if you do have everything you truly need in your packed bag, it could be cumbersome to get it out of the bag without completely unpacking it. At some point you’re going to want to be able to put your bag somewhere like a hotel room where you can completely unpack all of the things you’re going to need often.
Computer programs are the same way, really. They *could* just keep all of the bits and bobs they need to run packed with them in a little digital suitcase. But sometimes they just need more stuff than the little suitcase can hold before the suitcase becomes too big and heavy to use. Or, they need to grab things out of the suitcase really often, and having to dig through the suitcase is just way too slow, so they’d rather unpack it somewhere where it’s easier to get at everything. Both of these problems are solved by installing the software to your computer. It’s more or less exactly what installing is, really.
Sometimes programmers build software with existing building blocks, kind of like you can build a LEGO set. On Windows and Linux, these building blocks need to be placed in the correct location for the software to find and use them. On macOS, these building blocks are bundled inside the program and you *can* just download the file or boot it from disc.
Another benefit to copying the program from the disc to your computer is loading speed. For example, something like a game can be very large, and you would have to wait for the the disc drive to read media to play the game. When it’s installed onto your local drive, the computer can load the data much faster.
Let’s say you go to Home Depot and buy a power drill and a thermostat.
You can take the power drill out of the box, charge the battery, and use it. Nothing to install.
You can take the thermostat out of the box, but you can’t use it until you install it, because to function it needs to be wired to your furnace. You can’t have two thermostats controlling the same furnace, and the thermostat can’t talk to your furnace without being connected to the right wires.
Some software is like the power drill. You don’t really need to install it. The “installer” is really just an unboxer. In those case you can often find an alternate “installerless” app download. I know many apps like browsers do offer that as an alternative.
But some software is like a thermostat. The whole purpose of the software is to change how something on your computer works. One example is a driver – the whole purpose of a driver is to enable the operating system to talk to a specific device, like a printer or a video card. It needs to be “plugged in” in just the right place, or it doesn’t function.
In the early days of computing, most programs were just a single file (executable).
But as things grew in complexity, they started to need libraries and other dependencies.
So the installers came to simplify the portability of more complex programs.
Some of them simply unzip all the necessary files and move them into the respective folders, others installers install other programs in order to work.
At the end of the day, it all depends on the idiosyncrasies of today’s operating systems, which are becoming increasingly messy.
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