Mac Linux USB Loader v3.1 Beta Released w/ Kali Linux Support

Hello, everyone. Long time no see. I am happy to announce the release of the Mac Linux USB Loader 3.1 beta. This is strictly pre-release, and I do not recommend upgrading unless you have some experience dealing with beta software.
The pre-release contains the following changes from the current version:

• Updated to include version 0.3.0 of Enterprise, also a pre-release

• Added support for two languages, Spanish and Dutch

• Removed unnecessary menu options from the menu bar

• The Enterprise source location editor in the Preferences dialog now shows localized paths to the Enterprise source

• Enterprise sources can now be renamed (except the default)

• Write the new Enterprise configuration file format

• Fixes for users with case-sensitive file systems

• Updated Ubuntu and Elementary OS version support (mirrors for these distributions will be available upon the final release of this version)

• Kali Linux support

And finally (drumroll please)…
The final version should be shipping very soon. Please take this opportunity to try and report any bugs which you might find.
Note about Kali: There are bugs in the current version of Kali which stop it from working on older Macs with nVidia graphics cards. I am in touch with the Kali developers and we are working to fix the problem.
Click here to download the beta and feel free to contact me and donate to the project.

Localizers Wanted

Hello, everyone.

So, you all are probably wondering when Mac Linux USB Loader’s rewrite will be out. Well, fear not, because it will be out by Christmas, that is, assuming that you all have been good this year. ;)

But there’s one thing that I really need right now, and that’s people who can help localize Mac Linux USB Loader. Right now, Mac Linux USB Loader supports a few languages, and while that certainly isn’t bad, it precludes a lot of people from being able to use it, because it is difficult to use a program in a language that you cannot speak. Even worse is the fact that the rewrite hasn’t been translated yet - it’s only available in English!

So, this is where I’d like to solicit the help of the community. If you’re fluent in a language other than English, and you have a little bit of spare time, I’d appreciate it if could could translate Mac Linux USB Loader into your native language. All you need is some spare time and a Mac or Linux machine (you don’t even need Xcode).

If you’re interested in helping, please send me an email with the following information:

• Your name or online alias (so that I can credit you)
• The language that you’d like to translate Mac Linux USB Loader into (you must be fluent enough for an accurate translation)
• How long it will take to translate

Thanks so much. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Enterprise v0.2.1 Beta Released

I am launching on the blog-o-sphere today a post to discuss Enterprise.

Yes, Enterprise. A long overdue topic, I'm sure.

I am happy to announce that Enterprise has a 0.2.1 beta release. If you hadn't download it yet from the Enterprise website, I urge you to do so. Why? Well, for starters this new version fixes a number of key issues which have been plaguing users of Mac Linux USB Loader, namely, the infamous "booting in blind mode" error.

This beta also introduces preliminary support for both Kali Linux and Tails - two highly requested distributions. Although you need to set Enterprise up manually for these because support isn't yet integrated into Mac Linux USB Loader, it is easy to do so; see the official instructions for more.

Questions, thoughts, or concerns? As always, drop me a line, comment on this post, and feel free to donate to the project.

Adding Startup Disk Support to Mac Linux USB Loader

Hello all. Here's a long-awaited Mac Linux USB Loader update.

I've made a number of small changes to Mac Linux USB Loader, but perhaps the biggest new feature that I'm working on is making USB drives created with Mac Linux USB Loader compatible with OS X's startup disk selector. Here is the screen I'm referring to:

In order for this to work, a few prerequisites have to be met:

• You must enable support for HFS+ drives in Mac Linux USB Loader's preferences, under the Experimental section
• You must be willing to have files placed outside of the EFI folder on the root of your USB drive, as OS X must find certain files in certain places (essentially, we're tricking it into thinking that your USB has an install of OS X on it)
• You must use a distribution which includes drivers for the HFS+ file system in its initrd. Otherwise, your distribution will not be able to load properly. You may need to disable journaling.

More information will be forthcoming. In the mean time, feel free to comment, email me, or donate to the project.

This Independence Day, Celebrate Something as Important as Freedom Itself

America. The land of the free and the home of the brave has braved many changes through her years. So, this Independence Day, while we celebrate the brave actions of our compatriots 238 years ago, we also have another thing to be thankful for.

A new consumer preview release for Mac Linux USB Loader.

So celebrate the day in style with with a new preview of Mac Linux USB Loader's rewrite. Some specific changes since last time:

• The distribution downloader almost completely works now. It grabs the list of mirrors for a specific distribution from my repository and displays a nice little menu for you where you can select the mirror where you want to download. The mirrors are currently divided by country, with, obviously, the greatest country on the planet listed first (oh, sorry, excuse my jingoism - it is Independence Day, after all).

• And, the distribution downloader has a preferences window, though it doesn't really work yet. Most of the settings are saved, however.

There are a few additional changes here. Among them are:

• Some code was added to check the version of OS X that the user is running and, if it's Yosemite, it makes some small UI tweaks.
• The table in the Enterprise setup preference pane was tweaked under the hood.
• And some other, really unimportant stuff.

So, go ahead! Do your patriotic duty and download the latest test image now. Your country needs your immediate assistance! And always remember....

Okay, so maybe this isn't as important as freedom itself. But it's still pretty neat, right? :)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

OS X Yosemite

Apple today announced at its WWDC keynote the new version of OS X that will be arriving soon. Codename: Yosemite (YO-SEM-MIT-TEE). It shows great promise, but I'm not a fan of the new UI. Let's hope this doesn't become Windows 8.

What do you guys think? Comment below.

Mac Linux USB Loader: Declassified

So, for those of you who frequent this blog, you know about Mac Linux USB Loader, and how it is a huge project, at least when compared with some of the other stuff that I've done. You probably also know that Mac Linux USB Loader is currently being rewritten to be more future-proof and support more distributions. So, because not all of you can download and compile source code, I figure I'll share some more development screenshots.

This is the new persistence setup window. The layout is pretty simple and not all too complex. I made it easy to setup persistence, and you literally just need one mouse click, which is much different from the current set of instructions, which requires a command line and knowledge of how to use it. The default value used when setting up persistence is 128 MBs of persistent storage, which is usually enough for installing drivers and the like.

This is the distribution downloader. It doesn't really work yet and is currently in development. It is an expansion of the current distribution downloader panel in the current version of Mac Linux USB Loader. The distribution downloader offers a stable and reliable way to download ISO files of Linux distributions which can be used by Mac Linux USB Loader. I intend to have some sort of mirror support as well, so that you can download the distribution from a server closest to you, if supported by the distribution vendor. My plan is to open-source this whole process, so that everyone can download the mirror lists and make suggestions, etc from a site like Github. More details on this will be forthcoming.

So what do you think about the progress being made on Mac Linux USB Loader? Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts, and, as always, comments are welcome.

Mac Linux USB Loader's New USB Setup Window

Let's face it. Mac Linux USB Loader's current USB device setup window looks really bad. It's okay, you can admit it. It was kind of haphazardly put together without a real regard for design. Heck, the window can't even be properly resized.

With Mac Linux USB Loader's new rewrite, these issues will be put to bed. The new live USB setup window is a lot better and is more linear. By what margin is up to you to decide, but I think everyone will agree there's been improvement:

The very old but much loved drop down menus have been replaced with a much sleeker user interface inspired by simplicity. To choose the USB drive to setup a live USB for, you now click on a visual representation of your drive in the destination selector panel. And the screenshot probably spoils another new feature coming in this rewrite - you can now add your own copies of Enterprise to a list of sources in Mac Linux USB Loader's preferences. This means that if you like to compile your own binaries of Enterprise (because you don't trust me, for example) you can do that and use them instead of those shipping with the application.

And yes, you can resize and take the window fullscreen now.

Any thoughts? Comments? You can comment below or for a quicker response email me here.

A Sneak Preview of Enterprise

So, after a long, hard month of serious development (before this was a rather lackluster and on-and-off effort) I am pleased to show some screenshots of Enterprise, my custom UEFI boot manager program that I wrote about at length in this post. However, there are some (small) details that are different in the plan versus the implementation, and that's of course because I've found a better way to do things. So, here's are some screenshots, as promised, with comments:

This screen (which may receive minor tweaking) allows the user to select one of two basic options: starting the Linux distribution immediately or, in case there's issues with the video card, etc, to customize Linux kernel boot options.

This is what the boot options screen that I just mentioned looks like. You can toggle a variety of boot options (up to 9 is supported with this approach) that have a variety of functions. Some of them make troubleshooting easier, while others facilitate installing Linux to your Mac. I plan on adding more before the final release. Please note that not all options are supported by all distributions.

Love it? Hate it? Have suggestions? Drop me a line. I'm shooting for a release date of the 30th of November and I'd love to get some feedback.

Implementation Details of Enterprise, my Custom UEFI Booting Solution for Linux on Intel Macs

My repository on GitHub holding the source code for my program Enterprise is currently sparse on commits - no updates in over a month. But before you accost me for being lazy, listen up, for I have not been lazy, nor has the project been abandoned. I simply have been using this time to figure out exactly how I'm going to implement the program instead of simply throwing code together like before.

So, what do I have in mind? Well, listen up.

My booting solution for booting Linux distributions via EFI is a three-stage loading process, involving (at least) three files instead of the present two (two EFI executables and one ISO file of your preferred Linux distribution). These programs will be executed in sequential order. This works out as follows:

1. The user boots into the USB drive made by Mac Linux USB Loader. Enterprise will then perform some hardware checks to ensure that you actually booted on a Mac. It will then display a menu similar to those found in gummiboot or GRUB. I'm looking at rather basic options at this point - the options will be to boot normally, boot with certain options (like no graphical X desktop and/or disabling kernel mode setting), or reloading and/or dropping into an EFI shell.
2. If the user chooses to boot the operating system, we then write out a configuring file detailing exactly what is needed to boot Linux on the current hardware. Then we pass control off to GRUB, which is another EFI executable in the same directory. GRUB reads this configuration file and boots the Linux distribution included in the installed ISO file.
3. GRUB loads the kernel and RamDisk from the ISO using loopback. Together the kernel starts up the remainder of the operating system.

This approach will ultimately yield itself to be a more viable alternative to the current solution, which works with hard coded kernel locations inside of the ISO (however, loopback support will still be required, as this is required for GRUB to boot from the ISO file - there isn't really any way around this). Additionally, it will allow me to add support for more distributions with relative simplicity.

For those of you who want to see the directory structure, here's what it will look like:

I know many of you have been waiting very patiently for a solution. Tails, Knoppix, Backtrack, and Arch Linux are all distributions that I've been requested to support. I assure you that I am working as fast as I can to get these distributions working with Mac Linux USB Loader. I have no idea when this solution will be ready for beta testing, but everything should be on track now.

What do you think of this setup? Comment below. If you prefer to communicate via email, I can be reached here.

Mac Linux USB Loader Starred 50 Times on GitHub!

Mac Linux USB Loader was recently starred for the 50th time. Thanks everyone for your continued support - it lets me know that this tool is needed and keeps me going on development.

Also, thanks to everyone who posted articles on Mac Linux USB Loader, added it to Softpedia, and wrote about it on Wikipedia. You guys are the best!

Linux, OS X, and Windows... oh my!

This post is being written in lieu of a serious update in a while. First, an update on Mac Linux USB Loader. As indicated by my lack of commits, I haven't really continued coding the application in a while. This is because I've decided to take a hiatus from coding on it so I can focus on my personal life as well as on my other projects. I have lots of programs sitting my Code folder on my hard drive and some of them, like Enterprise, my Linux EFI boot loader, and Invasion, my first person shooter, have development levels akin to abandonment.

It's always difficult when a program isn't being developed. It leaves those who rely on the project in the dust and perhaps unable to perform their daily tasks. Eventually the program gets dated and it reaches the point that no matter how good the application is (or was), nobody can use it anymore. I have been a victim of this myself when looking for good development tools and libraries. Sometimes, a tool just too beneficial to let die gets picked up by another author who works on it. But many die alone.

Looking back on my own really old code projects, I've seen this myself. Old games I've worked on for a few days and then scraped, pieces of code that are now outdated, etc. I've written programs for OS X, Windows, even Linux... Even a project you're super thrilled about can meet its day. It's unfortunate, but true.

I hope to pick up some additional projects for the Mac App Store. I have a few ideas already, but I'm keeping them a secret. I do have some ideas for all of my old code, however. One of these days, I'm going to grab a bunch of old code that I've written or that has been written by others, and I'm going to look at it on this blog. Some of my old programs will go open source as well with a kind of scrap pack that I'll open source and put on GitHub. It'll be downright terrible code, but maybe somebody can learn from it.

Mac Linux USB Loader 1.0 Release Preview is Out!

The 1.0 release preview of Mac Linux USB Loader is out! It's totally feature complete. You can expect 1.0 out within a couple days.

Mac Linux USB Loader: 1.0 Looming

The 1.0 release of Mac Linux USB Loader will be out very soon, within the next 2 to 3 days. Although I didn't make my initial target of a March release, the additional time figuring out Sparkle has allowed for a more stable final product.

Release notes will be coming very soon! I'll let everyone know when it's out via this blog, and if you told Mac Linux USB Loader to automatically check for updates, you'll know as soon as you start the application.

Mac Linux USB Loader is Running Behind Schedule

Due to small issues, Mac Linux USB Loader is running behind schedule in terms of development, as I have not picked up the code in several days. Rest assured, though, that everything will turn out fine as I am still aiming for the 1.0 release in March. The problems are lying mainly with Sparkle, the framework I'm using to update the application, not detecting the server I'm using to issue updates.

The 1.0 release will be code signed and will run on Mountain Lion without the default security warning.

Small Update to Mac Linux USB Loader

Mac Linux USB Loader is now using Sparkle for updates, which will enable automatic updates of the application. In particular, it will enable smooth upgrading from the consumer preview to the release preview and then to the final release, as well as all releases after that.

I hope to see downloads to the program increase. Again, if anyone wants to contribute to the application, patches are always welcome.

Mac Linux USB Loader: Nearing Closer to First Release!

Mac Linux USB Loader, my flagship tool for installing a Linux distribution ISO non-destructively to a USB device, has a reached a point where I consider it to be stable enough for end-user use, although I am still not yet ready for a 1.0 release. The tool, which copies an ISO file of a Linux distribution to a USB device along with firmware which makes it boot, will likely have its 1.0 release in March. Therefore, I will calling this release the 1.0 Consumer Preview.

As implied by the name, the tool does still have some rough edges and possibly some bugs. However, I consider it to be entirely stable. It is designed to work with OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, though the tool has only undergone extensive testing on the latter and only compiles on that OS X version.

As the below screen will show, the application has a newly revamped preferences window:

The installation window remains largely the same, though it has undergone some cosmetic changes:

Well, there you have it. I look forward to releasing the tool very soon.

Direct Download Link | Webpage | Author's Website

A Quick Update on Mac Linux USB Loader

Mac Linux USB Loader (which I wrote about in this blog post) is coming about quite nicely.

Rather than explaining to everyone in a long, horrible post of every user interface change I've made, I feel it would be more effective to show you with a YouTube video.

I sort of rushed it, I'll admit, and that's why the screen is cropped and the video is laggy (my computer is a 2008 MacBook Pro, so it's not the best). But it does show off the user interface of the application, which it does just fine.

I hope to make another video at some point that's better, detailing how to use the software, etc. This will come along closer to the first major release, due hopefully in March (but we may get lucky, who knows?).

Also, I want to take the time to thank all the people who starred my GitHub repository, forked my code, and wrote reviews on their websites. You have no idea how appreciated that is. I never imagined it would get to the level of modest success it has. Thank you. Really.