Simon Willison’s Weblog

Repartitioning with Knoppix

I’ve been long bemoaning the fact that if you want to repartition your hard drive to install Linux as a dual boot with an existing Windows system the most frequently recommended method is to buy a copy of Partion Magic. You would have thought the open source software world would have provided a free alternative by now.

Via Andy Todd, it turns out that they have. GNU Parted is a repartioning tool for Linux. QtParted wraps it in a GUI with a Partition Magic style interface. And the awesome Knoppix comes with QtParted included on the disk. So instead of shelling out for an expensive package that you are unlikely to ever use more than once, you can download and burn a Knoppix CD, boot in to Linux and repartition from there. I’ll be trying this out for real on Monday, and I’ll report back with the results when I do.

As an aside, has anyone ever found a web page that lists all of the software included on the Knoppix CD?

Update: Closer inspection reveals that Parted can’t resize NTFS. Thankfully, ntfsresize can—and ntfsresize is integrated in to QtParted. Magic.