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.

Happy Valentines' Day, Everyone!

Just wanted to wish anyone who reads this a happy Valentines' Day. Hope you're doing well and everything.

Now, for a totally unrelated note: Fedora 20 boots via live USB on my MacBook Pro! Hallelujah! Looks like there's no need to add Fedora support to Mac Linux USB Loader. Now Canonical, why can't you do the same things they're doing? You know many Mac users want to load Ubuntu on their Apple machines, right? ;) I mean, it even has support for OS X's Startup Disk Selector panel in System Preferences.

I guess this just goes to show how different Linux distributions have differing levels of support to the various hardware types out there.

A New Mac Linux USB Loader

Hello everyone,

2014 is poised to be an interesting year. This is especially true because, as of the middle of last month, Mac Linux USB Loader has quietly been the subject of a complete, from scratch, no holds barred rewrite, with nothing recycled from before. The original program was designed when I didn't know much about the Cocoa framework, with which the program is written, and now with my increased knowledge I am able to design a much better application that is less buggy, more stable, and that will actually let you open an ISO more than once. Here's a screenshot of the new application's main screen:

The rewrite brings other beneficial changes as well. Mac Linux USB Loader can now set up persistence automatically - no Linux or command line required - making it even easier now to save data between sessions. I'm also working on enhancing Enterprise to detect persistence and enable it automatically on supported distributions, so you don't need to enter a secondary menu and enable it amongst a myriad of other technical options.

The new rewrite implements sandboxing for security purposes, and though it probably won't end up on the Mac App Store because of Apple's rules against mentioning other computing platforms, it would be nice if it did.

Technical changes aside, the revised application features a more "Mac-like" user interface, with greatly improved aesthetics, including icons from KDE's Oxygen and a new About window (with scrolling text!) that looks much cleaner than before:

I'm also grouping related options together. Everything from deleting an Enterprise installation to checking out installed distributions will be grouped under the Setup USB Device panel. And the Distribution Downloader, which will be making a comeback as well, will be greatly enhanced.

This new rewrite also has an important legal change - I've licensed the application under a 3-clause BSD license. This protects my rights to the program's name and likeness but allows liberal use of the code.

I've been working pretty hard on this, and I don't think it'll be ready anytime soon, so I can't give an ETA yet. Sorry.

What do you guys, the users, think of these changes? Drop me a line.

Roadmap for Enterprise and Mac Linux USB Loader

I'm just going to take a short while and discuss where I intend to take Mac Linux USB Loader and Enterprise. All software projects need goals, otherwise, they mute into unmaintainable beasts that cause frustration and leave the authors pulling their hair. Sooner or later, it happens to everyone.

But I'm trying to avoid that problem as best I can by planning ahead of time exactly what Enterprise will be, and what it won't be. I may revise this over time, but it will be relatively static.

So, where to take Enterprise? Well, here are a few talking points:

1. Enterprise is concerned with setting up the Linux distribution only, not for actually loading the kernel. I'm using GRUB for this because I don't want to write it myself. Because of this, I'm not adding my own kernel loading code. Why duplicate what's already been done?
2. I want to allow the user to manually enter their own Linux kernel parameters in addition to the ones already present in the menu. I can't predict every individual use case, nor am I going to.
3. Adding support for booting multiple Linux distributions is a big thing that needs to be added as well. This will require large changes to Enterprise. I've already started this.
4. I may decide to support UEFI support boot if I end of supporting PCs or if Macs end up adopting it. I definitely am not going to do this unless I have to, but it's an opportunity that I'm not necessarily opposed to.

And where to take Mac Linux USB Loader?

1. I want to add native persistence support to Mac Linux USB Loader so that users can natively setup persistence for their drives. I'm already working on this in another branch of the code, where it's coming along nicely.
2. To ease expandability, I want to allow users to get Linux distribution boot info from a server instead of being hard-coded into the application.
3. I want to allow users to update the version of Enterprise installed on their USB drives when an update is released.

Those are my goals for right now. What do you guys think? Comment below.

E2fsprogs for Mac

For anyone out there looking for a copy E2fsprogs for Mac, look no further. I've compiled the latest version for Intel OS X users as part of my development for Mac Linux USB Loader and am sharing it with the community. These come directly from the development git repository as of 16 January 2014.

If and when I need to update this, I'll post the changed link on this page.

UPDATE 20 MAY 2014: I am now hosting these directly on my Github Pages site, sevenbits.github.io. This lets me control the link directly and allows direct downloading without going to a third party page with advertisements. Plus, I'm not at the whim of others.

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER 2017: Apparently, people are still accessing this old post. It has come to my attention that the link here is broken, so I have updated it to point to my new web server.

Included programs:

base_device
chattr
e2freefrag
e2initrd_helper
filefrag
logsave
mke2fs
tune2fs
uuidgen
badblocks
blkid
dumpe2fs
e2image
e2undo
fsck
lsattr
mklost+found
uuidd

Download Here (hosted on my website)

Have fun, and hope this proves useful to someone.