A lot of games make you install separate libraries, which end up taking up valuable storage space. When the game uninstalls, these junk libraries stay on disk. Do you use Windows restore points or something better do deal with the bloat?
I’ve heard that Microsoft is working for a package manager on windows, or they already made one, or something like that.
A package manager is basically a program that keeps track of what is installed in your system, handle dependencies, and be able to remove dependencies that are no longer used by anything on the system. Package managers have been around for many years on Linux systems, but I’m not familiar enough with windows to know how possible it is now.
Apart from that, it would be really difficult to deal with this issue. You could hope a game comes with an uninstaller that cleans everything, but its risky removing a dependency, if another program might be using it too.
Chocolatey works on Windows and is FLOSS (Free and Libre Open Source Software) and it the primary method I personally use for updating and installing various programs. I've migrated nearly all of my usual programs to open-source alternatives. The ones that aren't open source are games (and game launchers) as well as storefront applications like Steam. So about 95% open-source system here (not counting the Windows OS of course).
Link: https://chocolatey.org/
I've pretty much never had to worry too much about 'installing' because I avoid that whole process hehe!
The main issue, I guess would be the save game folder, stored somewhere. But at the moment, most of my games have the old school system of 'level codes', so no need to saved games (yes, somewhat frustrating considering it's a bit restrictive) but the game can just be removed by deleting the folder.
Or am I doing it wrong? :/