I have become quite the fan of Gparted over the years of my Linux life and I started wondering if there were other partition management options out there. Specifically one that is Qt based instead. This is not a light on GTK based applications, I just find that they don’t tend to look as nice and clean as Qt apps. In this off-hand search, I stumbled upon PartitionManger which is in official openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap Repositories.
I should note, they both Gparted and KDE Partition Manager use the same icon.
Installation
Since this isn’t installed by default with the Plasma Desktop, arguably it should be, here is how you o about it. I noticed on the openSUSE Software Site, its short description is that you can Easily manage disks, partitions and file systems on your KDE Desktop. So I guess we will see if this holds true.
It is also described as being software that allows you to manage your disks, partitions and file systems that allows you to create, resize, delete, copy, backup and restore partitions with a large number of supported file systems. These file systems include ext2 ext3, reiserfs, NTFS, FAT32 and more. I am guessing you can also do Ext4, BTRFS and others.
It goes on to say that it makes use of external programs to get its job done, so you might have to install additional software (preferably packages from your distribution) to make use of all features and get full support for all file systems.
That’s good news as I am hoping it wouldn’t re-implement anything and just use existing tools.
To install in terminal:
sudo zypper install partitionmanager
or navigate here for the Direct Install Link
https://software.opensuse.org/package/partitionmanager
As expected, it installed very little, a total of 4 new packages:
- kpmcore – KDE Partition Manager core library
- libkpmcore7 – KDE Partition Manager core library
- partitionmanager – Main Application package
- partitionmanager-lang – Language support
Considering I have Gparted already installed, most of everything else is likely already there. I have a great respect and love for Gparted at this point, I am hoping that I am not losing any features by using KDE Partition Manager.
First Run and Impressions
Using the handy Plasma menu with the search feature, I started typing “Partition” and it popped up. I launched it and was given the dialog for root user permissions.
I am on the fence if I like that very detailed command being being shown by default. Instinctively, I say it is fantastic, but for a less experienced user, it could feel a bit overwhelming, perhaps.
After the root login requirement, I had this warning pop up which I thought was fantastic!
I have been using Gparted for quite some time and was having issues with an SD Card. My laziness, I just ignored it and now I see what the problem was. I needed the exfat utilities and now the world is right again. Adding this was as easy as running this in the terminal:
sudo zypper install exfat-utils
This automatically selected fuse-exfat package to be installed as well.
Once all this was up. I was greeted with a nice clean and familiar interface
What sets this apart from Gparted is that it shows you all the devices in a side pane instead of the drop-down. I will say, I much prefer the side pane to the drop down. It gives a better overview of what you are doing.
I wanted to format a device and give it a label for my upcoming experimentation with Ventoy for keeping and testing Linux distribution ISOs. So that is what I did.
Mainly, I just wanted the appropriate label. I also took this as an opportunity to format that SD Card, also an easy success.
Final Thoughts
It works! I can’t say it’s any better than Gparted as they both seem to work the same and have a similar appearance and workflow. If you can use one, you can use the other. The biggest difference is the devices side menu. I do like that more than the Gparted drop down. It provides a better snapshot of the status of the storage devices on your machine. Outside of that. KDE PartitionManager as well as Gparted are fantastic tools and this is mostly an appearance preference as I am sure they are using all the same backend of tools.
References
https://software.opensuse.org/package/partitionmanager
https://www.kde.org/applications/system/kdepartitionmanager
USB or Removable Media Formatting in Linux on CubicleNate.com
I use both. Old happens don’t easily die I just installed Kubuntu and, in less than an hour, had Gparted up and running. I somehow haven’t gotten used to the “perceived feel” of the KDE Partition Editor. Between the two: more of the same, both are excellent. The one in Windows 10 also worked nice but I usually would boot Mint from a USB stick if I wanted to edit or create partitions.
Gparted has been my jam for quite some time now. Both are excellent and without thinking I would use either and not be bothered by the slight interface variations.
Anything that can get a corrupt microSD or flash stick going again. I think they’re the same under the hood. I also liked the exFAT warning on the KDE trick.