My mouse driver is asking for a firewall exemption (2019)
I think it&#x27;s all about branding, the same disgrace that plagues mobile operating systems: every software maker tries its best to force users install their logo on their screen, so that if yesterday one could use 100 services just by saving 100 bookmarks on a browser, now they need 100 apps, with all the implications wrt waste of space and resources, security etc.
Although perfectly legit, it&#x27;s a practice that cannot scale.<p>Drivers installers on Windows aren&#x27;t exempt from this nonsense as well since years, so every driver started coming with its companion app, very often a huge VB &quot;thing&quot; that did nothing important except showing its shiny icon on the desktop. Then years later they started phoning home to profile users, attempt to offer purchases for consumables (as printer drivers do), etc.
In the old days however one had a way to control it: the .exe was often a self extracting .zip, so it could be fed to 7Zip and the like to extract the archive without executing it, then one would throw away the unnecessary bloat except the relevant .inf file and a few dlls or other small files, point to that location when searching for drivers, and voila: driver installed without the cruft.<p>The question is if a giant ball of Electron bloat could be dissected in a similar fashion in order to extract the important stuff and throw away the rest. I hope so.