How to set up a Live CD or USB with GParted?

Question

How do I set up a Live CD or a Live USB to run GParted?

Alternatively, how can I install GParted on my already set up Linux distribution?

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This is a Q&A blog-like question to refer any questions regarding the installaton of GParted, feel free to refer anyone here or suggest edits through the comments.

Answer 1

First things first. GParted is a software tool that let's you manage the partition scheme of your drives. Its advantages are:

• It can be run from a Live CD or USB at boot, so it means that you don't have to worry about your drives or files being used by other applications, as long as your drives are unmounted.
• It's Linux-based, which means that you shouldn't worry about Windows file permissions or privileges on your drives.
• The root user is enabled and doesn't have a password, so you can have full read and write access to them.

Also, the ISO image contains simple, builtin tools to mount your drives and browse your files, as well as a simple terminal emulator if you need to perform some more complex tasks.

How do I set up a Live CD or a Live USB to run GParted?

1. Download the ISO.
   • First of all you have to download the ISO of the bootable image from its official download's site: GParted -- Download.
   • Select the right architecture for your system from the Stable Releases table. The i486 architecture would work on almost all systems, including 64 bit ones.
   • You can also browse the different architectures from it's sourceforge directory in case you need an specific one.
2. Burn the ISO.
   • Once you've downloaded your ISO you can burn it right away on a CD with any image-burning tool you want, e.g. the Windows built-in image recorder.
3. Set up the Live CD or USB.
   • If instead of making a CD you wanted to set up a GParted Live USB, you can use the UNetbootin freeware utility to set up Linux Live drives, it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Alternatively, how can I install GParted on my already set up Linux distribution?

If you already have a Linux Live image or a Linux distro installed on your computer you can follow these steps:

1. RedHat or Fedora based systems.
   • Open a terminal and issue the following command: dnf install gparted.
2. Debian or Ubuntu based systems.
   • Open a terminal and issue the following command: apt-get install gparted.

You can also look for it on your favorite package manager. Note that you may be able to install it on a Live CD, but it won't persist after reboot (same for Live USB's without persistent storage) so it'd be like an install-and-use-once-app. This is not recommended on low RAM systems, instead use a live CD.