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This month I'm reviewing Parted Magic, YLMF, and a first-look at Google Chromium OS.

Parted Magic (sometimes called PMagic) is one handy utility. It resembles the old DOS Partition Magic but can do so much more. Parted Magic is Open Source and completely free. What could be better!

Parted Magic is self-contained to fit on a CDR or 1GB memory stick. To ease installation there are separate downloads and detailed instructions for each media.

Parted Magic is self booting-- turn your computer off, insert the Parted Magic media and allow PMagic to boot in place of your hard drive. (you may need to set a switch in the BIOS to allow this to happen or press F12 for a boot selection menu).
 
PMagic uses a simple Linux operating system to bring your computer alive. Click on the menu to find file utilities, connect to a network or even browse the Internet with a minimal Google browser (see more  about this below).

The stellar Parted Magic application is GParted which allows you to expand, contract delete or split hard drive partitions. In the sample shown, notice one drive split into NTFS, EXT3 and Linux SWAP partitions. Unallocated space is also shown (all current Windows and Linux formats are recognized). Distinctions are made between primary (bootable) and extended partitions. Changes are first made by right-clicking the drive rows and selecting options from a context menu. Finally when all changes have been made press the apply button to save your changes. Save can take several minutes or even hours as massive amounts of data must be moved and tested. Finally a text log of all completed operations may be saved or emailed to you.

You can move files between partitions using either Midnight (Norton) Commander-style or Windows-like file managers. This is helpful since Linux can read / write both to NTFS and Linux media. It is also possible to move (drag) files to or from a data memory stick.

Parted Magic is constantly being updated. At present look for Parted Magic version 4.8 See additional data on their web site at: http://partedmagic.com/
 

At the January FOSS-SIG Meeting I showed-off YLMF, a Chinese hack of Ubuntu made to look like WindowsXP. So far this is legal in that Microsoft decided not to sue.

Unfortunately the Linux distro is only released in Chinese. It didn't take someone long to post on the Web how to convert most everything to English. See my result below. The only item I could not easily change into English is the “Start” button at the lower left.

Chrome OS

The word has been out for almost a year that Google was releasing an operating system called Google Chromium OS to compliment their Google Chrome browser. Alpha builds are currently being tested and I recently tried a live image saved to a USB memory stick. Most people speculate there is an embedded Linux kernel under chromium. This OS detected my hardware correctly and even found the wireless card. And it boots very fast!

As you can see from this default browser screen shot, Google is heavily invested in their online cloud applications. This is interesting and may be the basis for Google's try at future dominance in mobile applications not requiring a full computer. Both bookmarks and browser history is saved to the memory stick.

There is no way to gracefully close the browser or Chromium. There is no Quit or Stop button so the user census is to press power-off to quit <?>. It works!

FOSS SIG News

The FOSS acronym stands for Free and Open Source Software. FOSS software is maintained worldwide by groups of volunteers committed to delivering quality products. There is never a charge for FOSS. You are invited to join the FOSS SIG on the last Thursday of each month from 1:00 to 3:00 PM in the TBCS Resource Center (no meetings in November and December). At the February SIG meeting we'll dig deeper into Parted Magic and actually repartition drives. Our website is at http://fosssig.com

See you next month inside FOSS-Flap.

Stew Bottorf
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©  2009 TBCS and Stew Bottorf