Portable application

Most portable applications do not leave files or settings on the host computer or modify the existing system and its configuration.

Another possibility, since file paths will often differ on changing computers due to variation in drive letter assignments, is that portable applications may store them in a relative format.

[4] As a result, when individual components are ported in such manner they are able to be: integrated into original portable applications, repeatedly instantiated (virtually installed) with different configurations/settings on the same operating system (OS) without mutual conflicts.

[5] It eventually incorporated some of this technology, using the techniques mentioned above, via its Application Compatibility Database[6] using its Detours[7] code library, into Windows XP.

There are also cross-distro package formats that do not require admin rights to run, like Autopackage, AppImage, or CDE, but which gained only limited acceptance and support in the Linux community in the 2000s.

[9][10][11] Around 2015 the idea of portable and distro independent packing for the Linux ecosystem got more traction when Linus Torvalds discussed this topic on the DebConf 2014 and endorsed later AppImage for his dive log application Subsurface.

[15][16] RedHat released in 2016 the Flatpak system, which is a successor of Alexander Larsson's glick project which was inspired by klik (now called AppImage).

[18] Examples include Mozilla Firefox, Skype and Google Chrome which do not require admin access and do not need to be placed into a central, restricted area.