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.