In need of feedback
September 15th, 2006
A new gmail account has been set up to get in contact with QBoot developers. If you wish to file a bug report, or leave feedback about QBoot feel free to give me an email at this address. If you are submitting a bug please prefix the subjects with “BUG:” followed by a short description of the bug. This will decrease the chances of your email getting accidently deleted.
The email address is qbootdev at gmail dot com.
Any qboot related feedback is welcome.
Project Update 02
August 15th, 2006
Work on 0.1 Alpha 2 is underway. Currently the top priorities are fixing the boot menu removal bug, and making QBoot easier to install globally. qboot.conf is now split into a global config file which tells qboot where to find modules and any other key files, and a user copy of qboot.conf which is basically the the same as it was. A new module will be added to QBoot for the Alpha 2 release. mod_firstrun will be used to set up the ~/.qboot directory if it does not exist already and ask the user if they would like to move their image files over to ~/.qboot/images, and finally launch mod_menueditor to add the images to the boot menu.
Alpha 0.1 released
August 4th, 2006
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. QBoot 0.1 alpha 1 (codenamed echo) is available on Sourceforge for downloading. Unfortunately I was not able to make all the packages I had intended, but the source tarballs should be fine for now. There is three tarballs for different purposes. The one with global in the name has the files arranged in a similar way that they would be installed in the /usr/local tree. The demos are similar to the pre alpha demos. They run QBoot from a single directory so you can try QBoot out without installing it. qboot-0.1a1-demo.tar.bz2 contains two image files and an already configured boot menu. qboot-0.1a1-demo-noimages.tar.gz is exactly should be exactly the same as the other demo except it does not contain the image files. The images files can be downloaded from the QEMU download page. The files are freedos.img.bz2 and small.ffs.bz2.
I need you feedback. If you have downloaded QBoot before (especially the alpha) PLEASE give feedback. Leave messages in the bugs forum if you find a bug, and leave comments about what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you think QBoot is missing. I want to make QBoot the best QEMU front end, and that can’t be done without user feedback.
Thank you for using QBoot.
Code near complete
July 31st, 2006
The finishing touches were put on the menu editor module today. The last task that remains (at least with the code) is to add an option to load the menu editor from the boot menu and the code is finished. One problem I ran in to was that everything is being run from the current directory, which doesn’t work well for an install in /usr, so I’ve had to change some things around to enable it to be run from there. Documentation is the main thing holding up the release. As soon as that task is done The alpha will be released. (Hopefully by the end of this week)
Alpha release comming soon!
July 29th, 2006
With the menu editor module being almost complete the alpha should be released any time now. All that’s left to do is to add the remove image functionallity to the menu editor and complete the install documentation. Along with the alpha I hope to release a second demo and rpm, deb, and slackware (tgz) as well as non packaged source code. With any luck the number of downloads of each type of package will be some indicator of the type of audience uses qboot. (not that you can tell a lot from the packages a person uses)
Project Update 01
July 27th, 2006
I’m glad to see that QBoot has finally started to pick up some web traffic, and that the number of downloads have shot through the roof over the past week or two. I’ve been busy rearranging and rewriting old code to keep it better organized and maintainable.
The QBoot launch script is now a container for commonly used functions such as those for logging and error reporting. Hopefully this will provide better constancy throughout the user interface and allow each individual module (such as the boot menu) to contain functions that only apply to itself. I’ve also decided to move a lot of the variables out of qboot.conf and into the module that needs them. I did this so QBoot.conf could be reserved for variables that are meant to be customized by the user. (like all good config files should) Variables needed by more than one module and are not meant to be changed are stored in the main QBoot script. So if you’re one of those people who actually look at the source, expect some variable names to be changed for clarity and some of the old code to be reorganized by the time the alpha is released.
I now also use the same images I used in the current demo in test code. It made more sense to use readily available free to distribute images than to use a Win98 install.
Scripts forum active
July 27th, 2006
I’ve created a forum for scripts. You can use it post code snippets or your own launcher for qboot there. Anything you contribute will be a great help.
Desktop Integration
July 13th, 2006
I was thinking about other things that could be done further down the road with QBoot and desktop integration . Can QBoot even integrate? What are somethings that could be done to make QBoot blend in more with KDE, GNOME, Fluxbox, XFCE, and Enlightenment. (0.16 or 0.17)
Leave a comment if you have any opinions or suggestions.
SVN Repository’s Up
July 7th, 2006
The SVN repository for QBoot are now active. I’ll try to commit source code at least once a day if any changes are made. So If you want bleeding edge sources, feel free to check it out. I also want to remind you that we have a forum that is provided by the Sourceforge.net staff. I would like to take full advantage of this service, so if you have any questions feel free to ask them there.
To checkout SVN sources type:
svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/qboot qboot
Whoops!
July 7th, 2006
After checking the QBoot download section on Sourceforge I realized that the demo had the name QLaunch on it. This was the origional name that was used before the project was submitted to Sourceforge. The name QLaunch was taken by another project at the time, so the name was changed to QBoot. The names on the demo will be changed, but there may still be referances to QLaunch in the source code. All naming changes will be fixed before the alpha is released.