Parting is such sweet sorrow - The Optimistic Contributor's review of Parted Magic

Like many in the IT profession, I have amassed an arsenal of hardware and software tools to assist in my daily duties. Rarely do I let the opportunity pass by to show off a newly found treasure to a friend or colleague. One of my recently discovered gold nuggets is the Parted Magic LiveCD/USB/PXE distribution. From the project's website the mission of the project is stated quite succinctly: "Parted Magic is a Linux LiveCD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives."

From a base Linux OS created from scratch (okay, he has a few init scripts from Linux From Scratch), the project originator and main developer, Patrick Verner, has assembled a collection of tools and utilities that are brought together in a cohesive manner with a high level of polish.

After downloading and burning the tiny 37 megabyte ISO image (version 1.9 was released on 10/26) to a CD, I booted a test PC and was greeted with a boot menu that provides just about any option necessary to make the system work without having to memorize boot parameters or dig through the documentation. After a short time-out, the default settings take effect and a simple XFCE desktop appears.

Exploring the XFCE panel, I found a logically organized arrangement. The first launcher starts the GParted application, the primary tool included to partition hard drives. GParted is a graphical front-end to the GNU parted utility. It offers all of the features of the command line version of parted, but they are wrapped in an easy to use GUI.

Verner has actually extended this application with a few patches of his own, one of which being the addition of the ability to create HFS+ partitions for those wishing to prepare a hard drive for use with Mac OS X.

The second launcher is that of the Thunar file manager, a light-weight system for browsing disks that is the default with any standard XFCE desktop installation. It was impressive just how fast the file manager (and the rest of the desktop) responded even on my old test laptop. Verner has obviously made a wise selection to use XFCE as the default environment. Although aesthetically very pleasing, it is not very resource intensive, providing a nice balance between form and function.

The remaining launchers continue the logical progression previously set forth: one for a shell prompt, one for a tool for taking screenshots (which is very handy to have for making documentation), one for the other utilities present (such as the very useful TestDisk recovery program), and finally one for documentation. For a full list of all the programs included, please see here.

As you may have already surmised, I like this project. It has become my 'go to' tool when dealing with any hard drive related issue, whether trying to setup multiple operating systems on a PC, or trying to recover some pictures for a friend that he accidentally deleted. It would take a long time to delve into each feature, so I would recommend you check out the website for more details.

My optimism started to fade recently when Verner posted on his web site that, due to the overwhelming amount of time that the project was consuming, (by his own estimate he has invested over 1,000 hours into the project), and the general lack of support from the community (in the form of donations, patches, etc.) that version 1.9 of the project would be its last. I was chagrined to say the least, but could understand. After reading through the project's web forum it was obvious that Verner was growing weary of fielding support requests from people who had not read the documentation or seemed to be demanding help rather than asking for it.

Since I had not contributed to the effort in any way, I sent a small donation with a note of thanks to Verner. He replied and it led to me questioning him about details of the project via email. It made me think about Free Software and what it means.

There are any number of reasons why a free software project might fail. It seems that (at least in this instance) too many people think of free software as in free beer, not as in freedom. When I advocate the use of free software such as Linux, I always tend to think of the freedom to make changes, the freedom not to be locked in. What I forgot is the old adage that freedom is not free. Along with that freedom comes the responsibility of the community at large to do what they can to help.

This help can come in any form, whether it is writing documentation, helping to moderate a web forum, or just simply sending a thank you email to the developer(s). In Parted Magic's case, the primary developer is a family man with an unrelated day job. He had hoped to be able to work on the project full time if given enough support. Because of the low amount of involvement of the community, a unique LiveCD project is going to cease further development.

I can only wonder how many other projects in the free software world have met the same fate. What great application or idea is lying dormant in Google's cache or the Internet Archive? I know what you are thinking, if we are dealing with open source software, why doesn't someone else just pick up where the original developer left off? The simple answer may be that people with the time, skills or inclination to scratch the same itch that brought a project to fruition are few and far between. Quite frankly, why would someone want to, knowing that they might meet the same fate as Patrick Verner?

The power of the concept that makes free software great lies in one area alone, the community. If we truly believe in the principles we espouse, we must each do what we can to help the foster work the community puts out there. My thanks go out to Patrick Verner, and all the people that did help him (they are listed on his web site), as well as all the other free software developers out there. I will try my best to do my part for software freedom. I hope (always the optimist) that other people do the same.

---

(Log in to post comments)

It's a pity to hear about such a well-regarded open source project ending.

But hopefully all of the hard work in producing a polished LiveCD won't be in vain.  My
thinking is that Parted Magic may have failed, in part, because there are similar
distributions which do many more tasks, and do these particular ones almost as well.

I'm thinking of SystemRescueCD, which includes all kinds of password utilities, disk wipers,
BIOS inspection tools, network tweaking tools, etc... in addition to a similar set of
Partitioning software.

While SystemRescueCD is highly useful, it isn't perfect... it lacks the kind of polish and
cohesive integration that you describe in Parted Magic.  

Perhaps SystemRescueCD can adopt some of what makes Parted Magic so great, including the
custom patches and slick interface that you described.  That would be a great example of open
source code outliving the original project that created it, and making itself useful to a
wider audience.

Released on "10/26"? How quaint! But LWN's international readership would find the ISO date
format less confusing.

Parted Magic sounds nice but hardly unique. http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/ (50MB) seems
very similar. http://sysresccd.org/Main_Page (160MB) included gparted and many more useful
recovery tools.

Looks like gparted-livecd is coming to an end too:
http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/news.php

The power is "the community". I thought that is one thing that says it all, there are so many
choices about where to add your contribution the choice is difficult. And I know lots gets
said about freedom, hence people setting out their own project and path; but contributing to
another (already existing) project would actually be more of a commitment to community.

And finally there is a navigation problem. Combined with there being so many choices. It's the
same problem that often faces software developers confronted with a vast code base. It can
take so long to find your way into it that creating your own fresh solution turns out to be as
quick (over looking as is usual the probability that your code base has many more bugs and
design flaws already overcome in the alternatives.)