Windows OS was always lacking centralized FOSS package repository that is typical on all other major operating systems.

When I started using Chocolatey, I was not happy about package update latency and stability so I created AU framework and got involved in development and maintenance of core community repository.

AU lets you quickly create packages that follow upstream version changes and rebuild, test and publish package ASAP. Furthermore, its designed so anybody can use it the same way and can rely 100% on cloud dev services or be used locally. To use it, you need to know basic PowerShell and create 1 or 2 callback functions.

AU is very fast, more than 250 packages on single coreteam repository are updated multiple times daily in less then 5 minutes and this is the largest repository there, for everybody else its usually less then a minute

This is like brew, but better since it supports multiple versions, binary packages and most notably you can keep packages privately or anywhere (AU also has plugin that releases packages on Github apart from Chocolatey Community Gallery). Gallery itself provides other free stuff such as virus total scan for all packages, automatic testing etc. One of the design goals was to make surfing the git repository similar to what you get by looking community gallery. There are plugins that convert readme.md to package metadata so that git dir also looks nice and could be referenced or even installed directly from (so without using choco infrastructure). It can also update multiple streams all the time (i.e. pyton 3.x 2.6x 2.7x….) constantly which is the only automatic system that does this AFAIK (solr example)

Speaking about recency, packages on AU are on par for example with Arch Linux user repository. Here is one example based on Repology: less is currently on latest version only on choco. dbeaver 6.0.5 ATM only on choco etc. Its similar with all other AU packages (not for others).

If you use Windows and want it to suck less, join the effort - either create missing packages or ask for developers to create one as part of the publishing routine. With this, you can create your own “windows distribution” trivially.