Perhaps because one is aware of gogrepo.py but not lgogdownloader?

Sometimes people just use one particular piece of software because they aren't aware of a good alternative.

Personally I don't find it that much of a difference nor does it take that long, however, as I said I only do like 5-10 games at a time each night. It takes me like 10 min to queue them all before I got to sleep. However, I'm not saying there isn't some much needed improvements GOG could do. I would like to see update notifications and the ability to mass download built into Galaxy for installers for sure.

Well it didn't replace it for me, and I was quite happily using the GOG Downloader, until it was removed.

It wasn't a proper replacement for many of us, and there would have been far fewer complaints about that, if a Galaxy lite had replaced it.

It's still not too late for a Galaxy Lite.

Would certainly be better than nothing;)

I have written GOG support more times and told them that the *LEAST* they could do would be to give us SAME *FUNCTIONALITY* or BETTER in GOG Galaxy as they took away when taking away the GOG.com Downloader .
Functionality as in
Being able to have your downloads sorted chronologically (as on shelf)
A one click to add all the stuff concerning one game to download queue !
Being able to have all your downloads put into it's own directory that has the name of the game (thus all sorted from the start with NO effort from user !)

They could do that easily by placing a chronological list of purchases in Galaxy with a download link next to the games name for all DRM FREE downloads (game and extras) )

But no no , they are selling the idea that you should only download as you go as in Steam app ,
totally disregarding the fact that they are a DRM FREE game seller and that the DRM FREE downloads are the reason why many of us buys , especially those belonging to original long time GOG buyers/users group !!!

EDIT :
Having Galaxy as install manager is fine ! , BUT , it should also be able to mange installs from DRM FREE downloads from local drive AND act as a download manger in exactly the same way and with same functionality OR BETTER than the GOG.com Downloader had !!! (Better would be to have a list of all purchases with a download link next to each list item AND with the possibility to sort items after both name and purchase date. Having such a list would be even better than before where one had to click more times to get download link added from shelf view .

Ideally I should be able to use GOG Galaxy to download all m y games to local drive and then later after that be able to install all my games from drive using GOG Galaxy without having to connect to the internet again !!!
And of course such an app (as GOG Galaxy) should also be able to manage more local download repositories as the source of install as I may not have one drive that could contain all the downloads !!!

You could call it the "Galaxy Downloader" and it could just act as a download manager for the offline installers. You could have separate links - let's call them "Downloader Links" on the webpage for each game and its extras.

That way, GoG can pretend that they're committed to Galaxy above all, and the rest of us get something that we want and can use.

Hey - here's a thought, they could even make it work on Linux and whatever Apple are trying to push on their unsuspecting customers this week.

Just to verify what others said before: gogrepo has supported Python 3 for a long time although the github page was never updated to reflect it. gogrepoc also.

As for lgogdownloader...

As a Fedora user (or pretty much any non-Debian user), to use...

gogrepo:
$ git clone ...
$ pip install html5lib html2text
[now good to go - also both these commands possible with an unprivileged user]:
$ python gogrepo.py (command)

lgogdownloader:
$ git clone ...
# apt install build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev libboost-regex-dev \
libjsoncpp-dev librhash-dev libtinyxml2-dev libhtmlcxx-dev \
libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev \
libboost-date-time-dev libboost-iostreams-dev help2man cmake libssl-dev \
pkg-config zlib1g-dev qtwebengine5-dev
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DUSE_QT_GUI=ON
$ make
# sudo make install

Maybe like others I was aware of gogrepo before lgogdownloader.
But the setup for lgogdownloader has multiple problems:
# <--- I have to be root to use this?
# apt <--- The README has everything listed for Debian Linux variants, however I have to look up all the Fedora equivalents though if I want to install via dnf/yum. A quick check of the pull requests suggests it would not be trivial to install the required libraries on Fedora. (This seems a plus point for Fedora, not lgogdownloader)
Why do I have to install so many libraries and then configure make and install what is essentially a convenience script?
Python is not universally loved, I get it, but this is a good usecase for python.

I guess that doesn't surprise me, even though lgogdownloader had been around for longer. After all, something that Windows users want will always be more popular and therefore better publisized. Yes, you have to be root to install packages on your system that are shared by other users. I don't use pip, and in fact it isn't even installed on my system, but I expect it's either installing stuff in your home directory (which isn't a good idea even if you're the only user) or it's using sudo internally as well.

Your argument boils down to "lgogdownloader isn't packaged for my distro" combined with "My distro isn't designed for compiling things by default". The latter sucks and is part of the modern way, which is to make Linux mostly as unusable as Windows. The former is because it's a niche program maintained by individuals who don't have the resources or desire to package it for every distro. Feel free to switch to a distro that actually packages it, like mine (Gentoo). If you're having trouble building it, you can also always post in the announcement thread like everyone else does. I'm sure there are at least some Red Hat users out there using it.

Anything else I have to say on the matter will likely offend people, so please don't bother me about this/reply to me any more. I don't give a damn how you maintain your offline installer collection.

I believe my GOG experience would actually be worse if using Galaxy and I'll demonstrate why. I've shopped here because there are DRM-free offline installers without any need of additional clients and baggage. That is the whole point to me. Whereas, by using the "optional" client, I would also be letting myself function as a statistic for GOG/CDPR to use in the numbers to say, "see, x% of our users are okay with Galaxy, after all, they used it at least once". Down the line, this pushes more focus on Galaxy, even if everything to do with it is DRM-free (which I don't believe is the case but I digress). Surely you are aware this issue of "becoming a statistic that supports further push in such a direction" is a logical conclusion, as I have seen users (including yourself probably, now that I think about it) make similar arguments about how us offline installer users are "just a vocal minority" (so ignore everything we are saying and warning about, even though we continue to be proven right).

GOG has also provided features that made my experience worse: autoplaying videos (which were changed but originally seemed "non-negotiable" or some such term), profiles. For a long time the front page of the site was unusable to me!

GOG has also actively taken away features that in the past had made my experience better: GOGmixes, and the still-topical Downloader :)

IF YOU WANT TO LET GOG KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, YOU STILL CAN BY VOTING.
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date

The wishlist is up to 2103 votes now. :)

Clearly people are still voting as it was 2039 votes when I last checked at the end of May.

2103 (and still rising) GOG customers are not happy that the old GOG Downloader has been removed.

Bring on Galaxy Lite.

I'm sorry, I really did try to refrain to reply out of courtesy. But you initiated the discussion and your reply needs a reply. I do appreciate the effort that the lgogdownloader developers put in - which was the precursor I am sure to other tools.

I use Linux at home in a single unprivileged user + root user setup. I imagine I'm not alone here. I've long graduated university and I don't work for an IT-centric company.

I can't imagine my usecase is uncommon. Maybe it is the most common usecase nowadays - I am not sure.

You mentioned multi-user deployments of Linux...are you suggesting that Debian/Ubuntu is used more commonly than RedHat/Fedora for multi-user usecases...I honestly don't know but I doubt it is the case.

Fedora is not anti-compiling but it is anti-breaking-package-proliferation and anti-nonGPL-package-proliferation. So not every package in existence is available in Fedora.

As a user/single-user-administrator I trust Fedora to try and maintain a sane fairly clean environment. Fedora has crazy short release/support cycles to enforce/support this but (in my opinion) it works for the most part.

But I'm sorry, C++ is not as portable as Python. Compiled languages are not as portable as non-compiled. If you blame Windows people for wanting a portable application then your argument started decades ago. Portable is better than non-portable is not a new concept. But most of the best programs started as non-portable, were well-regarded and then were overtaken by portable versions. It's a shit situation but that's the way it goes. This is the by-definition argument for portable software.

Do you even know what portability means? It's not the same as newb friendliness. Like I said, how you maintain your games library does not concern me enough to want to get into an argument with you on an inappropriate forum. I should not have replied to dtgreene at all. I'd tell you why I did respond, but again, that would likely offend too many people. Just shut up and leave me alone.

An interpreted language is only as portable as its interpreter. That Python code you mention will only run on a system that has a suitable version of Python, which might be a problem if you need to run it on an ancient or far future OS that doesn't have a compatible version of Python. On the other hand, that statically compiled C++ program will run in either case (assuming the same ISA; you're not going to be running that x86_64 code on an M1 Mac or a Raspberry PI without some sort of emulation or recompiling it).

So, there's a real trade-off here; run on CPUs with a given architecture, or run on OSes for which a certain interpreter is available.

Also, if a C++ (or C) program sticks to libraries that are widely available, and the source code is available, then it should be easy to port it to new platforms, often requiring just a simple compile (assuming there's a compiler to target the new platform, but you're more likely to have a C compiler than a Python interpreter (remember that the Python interpreter itself needs to be compiled for the new platform, and guess which language CPython (the reference and most common Python interpreter) ist).

Also worth noting that, in embedded systems, a Python interpreter may use up too much CPU and RAM to be viable, whereas C doesn't have that issue.

is there anywhere we can download the windows .exe version of the old gog downloader please? thank you.

The original link still works:
http://static.gog.com/download/d3/stable/Setup_Downloader_3.6.0_stable.exe