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.

Mac Linux USB Loader version 2.0

This consumer preview release includes loads of new features including:

1. Enterprise, my new UEFI boot loader that is far more customizable. You can view more information here.
2. Updates to localizations. Added a traditional Chinese localization (done by a third party user) and updated Spanish localization. For credits for localizations, see this file.
3. Big fixes and other changes.

If you want to download it, you can get it here. Please note that this is still beta, so it may be buggy. You can also email me if you have problems.

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.

Enterprise Developing is Rolling...

I am happy to announce that, after a long interim, development on Enterprise is going full speed ahead. Hopefully, there won't be any more long delays in development. I know that this is a much-needed program, due to many bug reports detailing the flaws with Mac Linux USB Loader's current firmware solution, and so hopefully it should be in a somewhat beta-testable state soon.

What's currently working is the initial menu and the kernel boot options configuration panel (from where, you'll be able to add options like nomodeset and acpi=off to the kernel boot procedure).

What still needs to be done is processing Enterprise's configuration file - currently it checks for the existence of such a file, but doesn't read its content - it could contain song lyrics for all it mattered - and passing everything to GRUB, which will load Linux from the supplied ISO file like at present.

Screenshots will be coming soon, but will take some setup to capture, as Enterprise runs before any operating system, and thus any potential for screen capturing.