Windows still doesn't have a coherent way of managing installed applications of various versions, and various degrees of conflict, ie, a package manager and they probably never will... Just saying...
It does. .msi installers act as atomic packages like other systems. Windows doesn't have a centralized system, nor does it enforce the use of msis. But they exist and provide a very nice way of managing resources.
The issue with a centralized system, of course, is licensing. Microsoft can't really have such a system because every developer wants to do their own thing.
The difference is that .msi doesn't handle dependencies, multiple versions or conflicts in a coherant centralized and useful way.
The current structure of the msi installers leaves them much like their exe counterparts. If this is package management then I'm going back to LFS and using make files.
They don't enforce .msi any more than debian (or ubuntu) enforce .debs. The lack of centralization just means almost nobody bothers to use msi and just rolls their own self-extracting archive.
