for partitioning

GParted is my tool of choice for partitioning. Many Linux distros ship with it; if the distro has a live session, just boot into it, run GParted as root, and get to work on your partitions. For example, in the past I've often run GParted from live sessions of MEPIS. More recently, I've used GParted in MX-14.

Parted Magic is one of the nicest distros for managing hard drives. It comes with Openbox, and it's loaded with tools -- including GParted, of course. The download will cost you about $10 bucks these days. I've still got a version on a flash drive from back when it was free (from pmagic_2013_05_01.iso), but Parted Magic is definitely worth the money, in my opinion.

Or you can just grab GParted Live. This is probably my favorite way to go. I downloaded gparted-live-0.20.2-i486.iso (only about 219 MB), used Unetbootin to put it on a flash drive, and booted it up. The GParted app started up automatically:

Besides GParted itself, GParted Live ships with Fluxbox, the PCManFM file manager, the Leafpad text editor, the LXTerminal terminal emulator, the NetSurf web browser, and a handful of other tools. As you can see in the release announcement, the current release is based on the Debian Sid repos as of October 24, 2014.

GParted Live page at DistroWatch: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gparted

GParted Live homepage: http://gparted.org/

parted magic

Here's an interesting Linux distro: Parted Magic. I was reading about it at makeuseof.com (Parted Magic: A Complete Hard Drive Toolbox On One Live CD).

I downloaded pmagic_2012_10_10.iso from the Parted Magic download page and used Unetbootin from Ubuntu 12.04.1 to put it on a flash drive. Then, I booted my Compaq notebook with it.

As you can see in the following screenshot, there are several nice tools available right on the customized Openbox desktop -- including Firefox 16.0.

Other apps thrown in include LXPanel, SpaceFM file manager, Xfce4 Screenshooter for taking screenshots, GPicView image viewer, Leafpad text editor, SciTE text editor, LXMusic music player, Xfburn for burning CDs, Galculator calculator, and ROXTerm terminal emulator. And you thought Parted Magic was simply some kind of "utility distro."

Nice selection of tools under the System Tools submenu.

Parted Magic is meant to be run in live sessions from a CD or flash drive, running from RAM, but their "Frugal Install" page shows how to install it to the hard drive.

I normally like to use Mepis for my live sessions, but Parted Magic includes all of the tools I'd normally need, including (of course) GParted and rsync. I was able to access all of my partitions easily with SpaceFM, which seems to be a very nice little file manager. I'm sure that I've found a nice replacement for Mepis live sessions.

The Parted Magic homepage: http://partedmagic.com/doku.php