APTonCD 0.2 is on the way…
…actually I call it 0.1.92 version “Hey, look at me now, seems like someone here grew up, huh?!” or yet “Guess what?! I have some good news for you” 
If you don’t know what is aptoncd (/me wonders where have you been), take a look at the project page at sourceforge and launchpad.
Seems like some people thought we’ve sticked in the 0.1 version, but actually we’ve been working on the aptoncd 0.2 version since the first release. Fortunately now we have a lot of good news in result of a complete code and GUI rewrite we’ve working on in the last few months. APTonCD still doing exactly what it did before, but now more easy and intuitive than ever.
Laudeci is the python mage behind the code rewrite, he has implemented a lot of code improvements and organization to give a more efficient experience to user and a comfortable coding for us python-hackers.
I can’t tell you everything that was changed and included in aptoncd, I’d prefer you see it by yourself. Here is some of the highlights of this upcoming version:
As you can see, now we have a new logo, thanks to vdepizzol for the great artwork — Tango-ishier. Other artists are incentived to make theirs own modifications of the icon to fit with any icon set, by calling it ‘aptoncd’, and also if someone wants to make a kde-ish icon to their set of icons (cristal, oxygen, I don’t know) are welcome.
The main window now looks like this:
But more beautiful than the main window is the Create window:
Notice that now aptoncd displays the information about the package in the treeview itself and a more detailed form in the header including the icon of the application if available:
Now you can add custom packages separately or point an entire folder to scan packages on it:
As expected you can find a package in the list just by start typing its name and it will find as-you-type:
What do you think of installing packages directly from the aptoncd interface? If you select a package that is not installed and if you have gdebi installed, aptoncd offers the option to install that package by calling gdebi to do it for you:
Know so little about a package? Don’t worry, aptoncd shows you everything you need to know about that package without compromising the interface and usability with the properties window:
That’s right, I’ve selected the packages you want to put in the medium and now it’s time to click on “Burn…” you will be taken to this dialog:
While you wait until everything is done, you will see this progress dialog, and now we can track the progress of the mkisofs (genisoimage):
In the Restore side we already have some good improvements, as you can see here:
Well, that’s all I have time for. I’ll need to do more 3 or 4 posts to say half of the work we’ve done this last few months and keep you up-to-date.
Any comments, feedback, question are very appreciated. See you.
Looks great, good job!
Wow amazing job! Will there be an option that moves the generated .ISO file to a pendrive aswel?
This looks very promising. But as currently designed, I doubt it will be understandable to many people, other than those who already know how to do this stuff the terminal anyway.
If you want this to be useful for as many people as possible, I encourage you to find a designer who can reorganize it in a way more people will be able to use.
In the meantime, here are some small suggestions:
* Make “Create” and “Restore” either tabs or a toolbar. As buttons down the left, they waste a lot of space.
* Make all buttons look like buttons, rather than borderless labels.
* Invest some time in teaching a writer what the various technical terms mean, so he/she can rewrite the text and labels. At the end of this process, the phrases “APTonCD”, “removable repository”, “cached packages”, “apt cache”, “APT source”, and “Cleaning session” should not be left anywhere in the UI.
* Put the details of the selected package below the list of packages, not above it. (As a very general guideline, in left-to-right languages, you should avoid having a selection in one control change a control above it or to its left.)
* Don’t give the column of checkboxes its own header. Instead, merge it with the “Package” header. (If that’s impossible, report the impossibility as a bug in GTK.)
* Use a checkbox only when both the on and off states are obvious from the label. That’s not the case for “Insert old versions”.
* If “Add” is a menu, make it look like one, with a border and downward-pointing triangle. (Alternatively, have separate “Add Packages” and “Add Folder” buttons.)
* Remove the “…” from the progress window title bar. (Window titles generally shouldn’t end in punctuation unless it’s part of a filename.)
* Don’t repeat the progress window title inside the window.
And here is a horrible big suggestion:
* Either split APTonCD into two dialogs that are opened from Synaptic menu items, or extend it so that it replaces Synaptic and Add/Remove Programs altogether. Having half a dozen different graphical programs for different aspects of software installation (synaptic, gnome-app-install, update-manager, gdebi, aptoncd) is madness.
Keep up the good work!
awesome work!
I like the feature for installing packages from within APTonCD. You could take this further.
Something that would be handy for people who want to clone a large set of installed packages from one machine to another:
On the “APTonCD Properties” window, under “Other Options”, add another check box labeled “Export List of Currently Installed Packages”.
If the user checks this off, then APTonCD does something like:
dpkg -get-selections > selections.txt
and puts the resulting selections.txt file into the ISO file.
Later, when a user runs APTonCD and hits the Restore button, the program looks to see if there is a selections.txt file among all those .deb files. If it finds one, it pops up a dialog telling the user that it found a list of packages to be installed, and asks the user if those packages should be automatically installed after they have been restored. If the user says yes, it does it (or it launches another apt frontend to finish the job).
Lovin it
Moved house and don’t have internet yet, so I haven’t been able to set up my HTPC.
So…
At work I virtualized feisty and set it up as a HTPC, used aptoncd to take ALLLL the packages and instantly setup the same system at home
THANK YOU