Re: free partition magic type thing

["Cory T. Echols" <coryechols@yahoo.com>]

On 06/02, da Bobstopper wrote:
> does anyone know of a free software equivalent of partition magic? 

    GNU parted does this (according to its man page).  I haven't tried 
it though.
> 
> what i'm figuring is that if we want to push free software, we've got to make
> it more accessible. a lot of people only want to try out linux at first, and
> are put off when they find they need to go buy partition magic or whatever
> to make room for linux. it would be nice to be able to say to these soon to
> be linux devotees "hey, look! there's a free software equivalent to do it for
> you! isn't free software grand! *nudge nudge*".

    Actually, those days are over.  There are linux distros that will
install an ext2fs loopback filesystem on a FAT partition.  This way you
don't modify the partition table at all, and you don't have to muck
around with UMSDOS.  I'm not sure what the technical consequences are of
this sort of setup, but it's probably the best option for the pure
newbie.

> something else like norton's ghost would
> also be nice... but anyway, details of any kind regarding this would be most
> welcome. thanks

    Linux doesn't need a ghost clone.  dd and tar/gzip should work pretty
nicely for that sort of thing.  Ghost is only necessary on windows
because the copy/xcopy dos commands have some nasty implications when
used with long filenames.

-- 
Cory T. Echols
coryechols@yahoo.com