No, App-V is not EOL in April 2026

a few weeks ago, a customer wrote to me saying that App-V is to go out of support in 2026 after all. 2026? Where did the new date come from? There was the problem that many thought App-V was going out of support in 2025 because the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) had been announced for that date. The MDOP includes, among other things, the App-V infrastructure for distributing App-V packages to endpoints. But the App-V client itself was integrated into the operating system starting with Windows 10 1607 (at that time also in Windows Server 2016). App-V packages can also be distributed by other means (PowerShell) or another deployment method like Endpoint Configuration Manager. So nothing to worry about.

As I wrote in the blog "Winget on Server 2022", there is a reason why we can't use Winget.exe with Server 2019. Winget is started from the command line and support for it is missing in Server 2019. The situation has changed and we have a solution.
Winget, similar to "aptget" on Linux, allows a significant number of Applications can be installed with simple commands from the command line. A description of Winget can be found here: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/. 

The Winget installation package Winget is a part of the AppInstaller package with which AppX and MSIX packages can be installed at the click of a button. In the Microsoft Store you can find the package can be found here (pay attention to the release here, possibly use Insider): 

https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/p/app-installer/9nblggh4nns1#activetab=pivot:overviewtab. 

Furthermore you can find the package Windows Package Manager in the GitHub repository. Manager, which can be installed manually and also includes Winget:

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/releases/tag/v1.1.12653

This is all a bit confusing from a purely linguistic point of view. The key thing is that we need an easy command line tool that we can use to automatically install applications from many manufacturers in an automated way. It would now of course be nice to use this Tool, also for Server 2019 to be able to use. 

My friend Thorsten Butz (you can also find a session of PSUGH there as a recording) figured out two things: