Linux + Resizing partitions

[mtxblau]

Well all, another question for you to contemplate.

I have a nice SuSE 9.0 install running along with WindowsXP home SP1, everything is fine and dandy. However, I'm running out of space in Linux partition, and want to decrease the size of the third partition (FAT32) and give it to Linux.

If I went into XP and used partition magic to do as I just said, would that mess up anything or no? I don't particularly want to hose the already perfectly setup install (I just want to use/try XD2 from Ximian).

Thanks!

 

[antime]

There's always a chance you'll destroy your installations, but PM should do the trick provided you use ext2 or ext3 as your Linux filesystem. If you use ReiserFS or something more exotic you'll have to find another solution to that part of the problem (there's nothing preventing you from simply creating a whole new partition in the freed space and mounting it at some suitable point).

 

[it290]

I think with PM you want to remove the journal first and then replace it if you're using an ext3 filesystem. I don't really trust PM with anything other than FAT32/NTFS partitions. If I were you, I'd reduce the size of the FAT32 partition with PM, then increase the size of your Linux partition using GNU parted.

 

[antime]

Parted can't move the start of the filesystem which can be a problem, depending on the partition layout.

 

[it290]

Hm, I didn't know that, but it shouldn't be a problem if the FAT32 partition really is the third one. Just resize that, move it to the end of the HD, and then increase the size of the Linux partition.

Although if I were in MTXBlau's shoes, I wouldn't play around with it too much. I have a total of nine partitions on two drives from doing this kind of stuff, and a 5gig hole somewhere that I couldn't find a way to fill (because of the whole primary/extended partition thing). 😉

 

[mtxblau]

I'm thinking of just reformatting the whole thing, rather than try to deal with a f**ked up SuSE install. I have all my RPMs (built most of them myself) so getting the drivers and everything working should be a snap.

One can only hope Ximian is worth it. SuSE are KDE freaks - I want to try something a bit more like Windows (or at the very least something other than the Konqueror filebrowser).

 

[it290]

GNOME 2.6 is due out any day now, with numerous improvements over 2.2. I would recommend you install that. XD isn't that advantageous on it's own, IMHO.

 

[mtxblau]

Originally posted by it290@Mar 29, 2004 @ 08:33 PM

GNOME 2.6 is due out any day now, with numerous improvements over 2.2. I would recommend you install that. XD isn't that advantageous on it's own, IMHO.

What is XD2 based on, do you know?

EDIT: Nevermind, it's based on 2.2. Hrm... curious, there isn't anywhere (that I see) that indicates a release date for a 2.6 build.

The reason why I'm more interested in XD2 than just the default Gnome is the desktop is geared towards 'office use'. I use my machine primarily for work - the integration of OO, and web-browsing seems tight. But that may be just me.

I should get around to setting up apt for SuSE so I can grab 2.6 as soon as it comes out. Hopefully it isn't as annoying as 2.2.

 

[it290]

The main improvement in 2.6 that everyone's been waiting for is the new GTK+ file requester. The one has shipped since 2.0 is pretty substandard.. actually it's worse than the old 1.4 one. There are also a great number of benefits you can get from compiling your own stuff into the newer GNOME versions.. for instance Fontilus and the Nautilus CD Burner, both of which are great features.

As for getting work done... I've always preferred AbiWord to O😵 as far as word processing goes.. it's just sleeker and more efficient, IMHO. But, then again, when I need to do anything beyond basic stuff I always turn to Quark anyway, so maybe I should butt out. 😉

 

[mtxblau]

Well, I got around this space problem.

I ran the installer, and let it download all the rpms, and when it came to the error for lack of space, cancelled it. The rpms apparently stayed on the drive, and I moved them to another location. Using the command:

rpm -Uvh *.rpm --nodeps --force

I managed to install 99% of the packages. Some still complained about space but *surprise* those are the very same packages I didn't want, so not a problem.

Re-ran the installer, which then noted that all the rpms were installed, then ran the linker. Ran SuSEconfig, ran Yast to clear up any dependency issues, and added

'gnome-session'

to KDM. After that, it works!

And I have to say, it was worth every moment getting this thing installed. I used Gnome 2.4, and now this, and I love ximian. It's much cleaner, more intuitive, etc. I know that I'm now locked into Novell and I'm at their mercy, however, I don't think that's all that bad. I really am enjoying this new layout/gui. *Much* better than KDE.

I'm going to give it a couple days, then probably uninstall KDE.

I'm looking into Abiword, I've read some nice things about it. However, the integration of OOo is seamless, and from what I've read, Abiword doesn't handle MS docs as well as OOo, so we'll see.

Thanks for all the suggestions. And thankfully I don't have to reformat or anything (since PM refused to resize this partition). Better still, since everything is running well, I really don't have any reason to do this again for 9.1 (and I really don't want to reinstall everything again).

 

[it290]

Funny, I'm considering switching to KDE at the moment, I've been using it for the past few days. I've been a GNOME user for years (waiting for E17 to come out), but the whole 'spatial Nautilus' thing in 2.6 really turned me off. I know you can disable it, but if you do so, it doesn't remember any of your window positions. I'm finding KDE 3.2 is a lot nicer than older KDE releases. Konquerer is _much_ faster than Nautilus, and has some neat features that Nautilus lacks as well (the ability to split each window into multiple panes and add a shell to any of them is awesome!). True, it does suffer from having a bit 'too much' of everything, but I'll see if I can get used to it. I do like the GNOME apps (totem, epiphany, gthumb, etc.) a lot better, though.

 

[mtxblau]

I had the EXACT OPPOSITE issue! Konqueror is much slower on my system, sometimes taking 4-5 seconds to open a directory I just closed (usually by accident).

Nautilus runs much faster, that's for sure.

The thing about KDE is as you said, too much of everything. It's ridiculously hard to try finding how to change small preferences since there is just menu upon menu upon menu. There is a learning curve with KDE, and my first experiences with Linux were with KDE, yet I never could grasp it.

The one other thing that drove me nuts is that Konqueror is also the default web browser. It's web browsing capabilities are terrible. But maybe that's just me.

For all of XP's faults, the one thing I liked was that the menus were simplified, and that most options were located in one menu, and with powertoys, all the options for the whole system were located in one program. I wish there was a way to do that within KDE or Gnome, that's probably the only thing I miss about Windows.

 

[it290]

Yeah, Konquerer doesn't make that great of a browser. I'm still using Firefox for that.

As for the speed issue, it could be a version thing. I an older KDE rev on this machine once (I believe it was 2.0, can't really remember), and it was extremely slow and felt very bloated, whereas 3.2 feels very fast. Nautilus has also improved its speed considerably in recent versions. They're almost on an even footing for most things, but, for instance, when I open my 'pictures' (containing about 250 images) directory, Konquerer opens it up instantly, whereas Nautilus sits there churning for about 3-4 seconds and reading all the thumbnails before it will show me the contents. I'm not sure why this is, probably some kind of caching, but I really think Nautilus needs ot implement it. For smaller directories without lots of thumbnails and whatnot, Nautilus is about the same speed. Yet you'd think it would be faster because it doesn't read all the metadata by default the way that Konquerer does.

 

[mtxblau]

I was using 3.1.4. I don't know if 3.2 that significant of a change, but I'll get the RPMs for it and see. I could very well be wrong.

Perhaps you can answer this question for me though.

Rather than painstakingly download each file one at a time, would you know the command line to get the files w/ wget? They're all here:

http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/li...r_9_0/base.html

If I remember correctly, you use apt-get (which I still haven't set up - I must!) so I suppose this really isn't something that concerns you. If anything, any info would help.

 

[antime]

Why not use FTP and do an "mget *.rpm"?

 

[it290]

Yeah, what antime said. I personally use gentoo, so 'emerge kde' is all I need to do for the most part.