Open source Gnome Partition Editor gets easier

Staff without Linux expertise can use free utility to resize disk partitions with various file systems

Open source developers released a new edition of the Gnome Partition Editor (GParted) earlier this month. Though it is based on Linux, updates to the bootable versions mean people without Linux skills can now use them.

The free utility is designed to resize disk partitions, which may contain a variety of file systems, including Windows NTFS and Linux ReiserFS and EXT file systems. Though changes to disk partitions are usually infrequent, the ability to make such changes is sometimes invaluable in datacentre operations. Operating systems such as Windows and Linux do not have built-in tools to do it, so before the arrival of open source tools, firms needed to pay for commercial software to do the same job.

The authors of GParted make the toolkit available as a software package that can be installed in a Linux system, but they also provide it as a bootable CD-Rom and USB key images. For example, staff can use the bootable CD-ROM version simply by copying one ISO file to a blank CD-ROM and rebooting their PC with that disk.

The tool provides a full graphical display that will be familiar to people who have used the popular PartitionMagic tools from Symantec.

Version 0.2.5.3, released on 9 July, adds an entirely new boot procedure and includes version 2.6.17.4 of the Linux kernel. For the first time, the bootable versions also include the popular fdisk and rsync tools, and now include a simple button that can be used to shut down the system without the user needing to know any Linux commands.