Where to get Evolvotron

...for GNU/Linux and BSD

If someone has already packaged Evolvotron for your distribution, the easiest thing is to use that:

Debian

Official packages now available in testing and unstable.

Ubuntu

Some packages at getdeb (The .debs there are for "feisty" but seem to work in "gutsy" just fine). In the longer term, it should be included in the "hardy" universe.

RPM-based distributions

Karl Robillard has built a fine collection of RPM packages for Mandriva, Fedora and OpenSUSE. For Mandriva, evolvotron may also be available via the "Cooker" or "Club" or something like that.

Gentoo

In portage.

FreeBSD

In the ports archive.

Linspire/Freespire

There's a fairly old version of evolvotron in the "CNR warehouse".

There may be a few .debs for Debian/Stable (386, sparc) and the latest Ubuntu (386) on the SourceForge downloads page. These are built using the Yada packaging helper and mainly intended to sanity-check build dependencies and the general feasibility of packaging the application. They are provided in the hope they may be useful, but in general the "official" packages for your distro should be preferred.

If you need to build it, download and unpack the source release (gzipped tar file) from Sourceforge and read the README. Assuming you have Qt (with qmake), a correctly set up gcc and the Boost libraries, it's trivial to build.

...for the Mac

evolvotron is available via the Fink project.

There's also a port (possibly PowerPC only?) at ATG. Note that you will also need to install the supporting Qt toolkit separately; it's also available from the ATG site. (NB Qt is NOT the same as Apple's Quicktime). Popular Mac sites like VersionTracker also host the ATG version (the ATG site seems somewhat unreliable).

...for legacy systems

I'm not currently aware of any port to win32. However all is not lost if you are unfortunate enough to be stuck with such a system: your hardware can probably be temporarily booted into Linux using the Ubuntu install CD's "Live" mode. This allows you to simply boot up a Linux environment directly from the CD without touching your machine's regular setup or installing anything on your hard drive.

• Visit the Ubuntu download page and download the ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso disk image, then burn it to CD-ROM.
• Put the CD-ROM in your target system and reboot. An "ubuntu" logo should appear; select "Start or install Ubuntu" using the keyboard arrow keys, then press "return" (or just wait for the timeout to select it automatically).
• A "loading linux kernel" progress bar should quickly appear and disappear, followed by an ubuntu logo with an orange progress bar. After a while the Ubuntu desktop should appear.
• Click on the firefox icon at the top of the screen (the orange and blue icon to the right of "System") Type http://sourceforge.net/projects/evolvotron into the browser and press "return".
• At this point you'll discover if Ubuntu managed to find your internet connection. You're least likely to have problems if you're on a LAN with a DHCP server (most standalone routers can act as such), whereas machines with their own USB modem (which usually have windows-only drivers) are most problematic. Dealing with such issues is beyond the scope of this writeup; consult the ubuntu forums.
• Assuming your browser can see the sourceforge page: Go to the "Downloads" page and click on evolvotron-0.5.0-1gutsy1_i386.deb.
• A dialog should appear giving you the option to open this in "gdebi-gtk"; click OK. A "Package installer - evolvotron" dialog should appear. Click the "Install Package" button with the green tick. After a short wait while a couple of dependencies are installed, an "Installation finished" dialog should appear, close it, and the "Package installer - evolvotron" dialog too (use the 'x' box in the top right).
• From the "Applications" menu at the top left of the screen, select the "Accessories" submenu, and from that "Terminal". When the terminal appears, type evolvotron in it and press return. The evolvotron application should appear; enjoy!

This is a hosted project.