Thanks for providing the portable 7z instead of a setup exe.

Unfortunately providing it as a 7z is likely to be small.

One major goal of providing portable versions is: allow people who don't own the computer they use to use your software. Students at Schools and Unis, people at work.

Running the exe installer requires admin rights.

However, extracting a 7z requires 7z to be installed.

Installing 7z requires admin rights.

7z does not provide a portable version.

Portableapps provides a portable version and portableapps is great but I speculate many people either don't know portableapps or don't trust portableapps.

Please provide the portable version as zip or as 7z and zip if you would like to allow people who want to try kdenlive, who can't install software on a computer that doesn't have 7z.

IMHO 7zip is great and every computer should have it but it's probably not the case.

I thought exactly the same as I created the refactoring 7z file.

The zip file is more than double in size (ca.170MB).

I can create a self-extracting 7z exe which has the same size as the 7z (75MB). Would be this an alternative? So people can extract onto a USB stick and running Kdenlive from there.

Merlimau wrote:I can create a self-extracting 7z exe which has the same size as the 7z (75MB). Would be this an alternative? So people can extract onto a USB stick and running Kdenlive from there.

My suggestion: if it can be automated, provide all 4 variants, even better if you can track their popularity.

Self-extracting 7z is great if it doesn't require admin, when compared to 7z (assuming there are many machines that don't have 7z installed).

I don't know how confused users are by portable versions that are .exe - I'm guessing many have been made to accept these through portableappsdotcom.

My personal order of preference is:
zip* > exe extractor* > 7z > exe installer (*I care about these because I want users to have an easy time when I teach them to use kdenlive for example, for my own use on my computers, I prefer 7z )

Somebody who doesn't have admin rights (assuming 7z is not installed) and cares about saving bandwidth will likely prefer:
exe extractor > zip

Somebody who is afraid of exe files will likely prefer (I really have no idea whether understanding that an "exe" can be a "harmless" extractor is a problem for people who have been taught never to run exe files they downloaded off the internet):
zip > exe extractor

So looking back, if it's too much work to provide more than one portable version, providing an exe extractor seems like the best option. I would add this text behind the download link:
(self-extracting exe, not an installer, does not need admin to extract).

Sorry but the setup exe doesn't require admin rights, only if you try to install to Program Files!
I know because I'm not admin on the only Windows machine I have access to...
So it's not much different from a self-extracting 7z, except that it stupidly doesn't want to install 2 different versions I agree.
Zip consume significantly larger server space and bandwidth.