Using a package manager

The easiest way to install software on a Mac or Windows laptop is to use a good package manager. On a Mac, most people use Homebrew and on Windows, Chocolatey is a good choice.

Installing Homebrew on a Mac

Installing Homebrew on a Mac is easy; just follow the instructions at https://brew.sh/.

The following is the command to install Homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Once the installation is finished, test whether Homebrew is working by entering brew --version in the Terminal. You should see something like this:

$ brew --version
Homebrew 1.4.3
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision f4e35; last commit 2018-01-11)

Now, we are ready to use Homebrew to install tools and utilities. If we, for example, want to install the Vi text editor, we can do so like this:

$ brew install vim

This will then download and install the editor for you.

Installing Chocolatey on Windows

To install the Chocolatey package manager on...