While this still works fine, it is not being updated, so the included Quake engine versions and lists of installables are somewhat outdated. Various developments in the ecosystem of Quake tools and websites have ablated away the value of this project while also making it more difficult to maintain, so it is mothballed at least for now.
Quakestarter is a (Windows only) package with tools for setting up a playable Quake installation and downloading/playing/managing many highly-regarded addons. This includes any necessary patching and recommended configurations for the addons! It's menu-driven, super easy to use, and has an optional autoupdate feature to help keep everything current.
This package also contains quite a bit of documentation on configuring Quake and exploring other user-created content.
New players can use Quakestarter as a quick way to get going with Quake and the many amazing things created for it since 1996.
Veteran players can use it as a nice way to bootstrap "yet another Quake installation", or to discover overlooked gems -- since no one can keep up with every single piece of custom content released.
Each release includes a quick-start guide and detailed documentation. The docs for the latest release are also online at http://quakestarter.com .
A "release" of the Quakestarter package is created by running the "devtools/release.py" script, which zips up most of the files in this repo along with the latest stable releases of vkQuake, Ironwail, and Simple Quake Launcher 2.