Attack of the Clones
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jacog Feb 18, 2009 1:10 AM EDT |
In an earlier thread I was yelling a some company for getting scrappy about a developer that made a free game very similar to theirs. I stick to my points. However... There is a thing that sometimes happens in free software that's almost like jumping up and down and yelling "we're unoriginal". We put out clones of proprietary products, or give them names similar to their prop. counterparts. Parted is a great partitioner and certainly not a clone of anything, but this mini-distro, being named "Parted Magic", is clearly intended to be a sound-alike of Partition Magic. On the one hand I can understand why. It might perhaps make people stumble upon it who are only familiar with Partition Magic, being a more popular product. But having it sound similar to the other product makes it seem like a cheap knockoff, rather than something that stands on its own merit. |
| techiem2 Feb 18, 2009 11:05 AM EDT |
"Partition Pwner" How's that? :P |
| caitlyn Feb 18, 2009 12:01 PM EDT |
I'm going to be doing a review of Parted Magic soon... a very positive one. I used 3.5 to shrink the Ubuntu partition on my netbook and create a swap partition, a separate home partition, a Vector Linux partition, and one I use for testing. It was easy, intuitive, and just plain worked. Yes, it sounds like Partition Magic and that appeals to the Windows crowd. So what? This product does stand on its own merits. |
| tracyanne Feb 18, 2009 12:21 PM EDT |
Yeah, the name actually sounds stupid, so caitlyn is probably right, I think it's a damn good product. I enable me to shrink the partition on the new windows machine I was given at work (the only copy my boss had of partition magic had an expired license.. go figure, the rent was due and he hadn't paid), so I could create a seperate "home" partition, where i keep my work (unfortunately you can't ever recreate Linux in Windows) a small 8 Gig "swap" partiton where I moved the swap file to (at least that will remove, or reduce, one of the reasons why windows becomes severely fragmented). It also made it possible for me to shrink a Windows partition on a notebook I upgraded to Linux, and do the upgrade progressively in stages, finally removing the Windows partition and setting that as root and swap for the EeeBuntu distro I installed, and removing the small swap and root I'd created at the end of the disk, for the initial setup, and returning those to home. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 18, 2009 1:47 PM EDT |
The real test: Can it shrink Vista partitions? Ubuntu's installer cannot, even though it claims it can. I believe that's gparted based as well. |
| bigg Feb 18, 2009 2:01 PM EDT |
> Can it shrink Vista partitions? Yes. Never had a problem. > Ubuntu's installer cannot Not to bash any distros, but... |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 18, 2009 2:43 PM EDT |
I absolutely love Parted Magic. It's my partition tool of choice, and I've used it on just about every box I have. It has no problem shrinking ntfs partitions. The last couple of times I set up a box, I used the partitioning tools in both Debian and Ubuntu, and I wasn't as happy using them as I was using gParted, which makes it easier to control what's going on in extended/logical partitions. What I'd really like is a Parted Magic that runs on PowerPC ... And it looks like my wish has already come true: http://www.livecdlist.com/?pick=Linux_PPC&showonly=All |
| jacog Feb 19, 2009 4:57 AM EDT |
caitlyn: Yes, the product is great, and it does stand perfectly fine on its own. And that's exactly it. My point is that naming it the way it is in order to appeal to / be noticed by the Windows crowd will have the opposite effect. It cheapens a product and makes it less easy for the superficial masses to take seriously. But more than that I was referring to a more general habit we have of playing second fiddle to other platforms. We really don't need to do that. The MS tactic is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. The FOSS one seems to more and more be one of Embrace, Extend, Give Away For Free... which is fine, but why should we set our bar so low? In Kung Fu (and I believe this is a general martial arts principle) we were taught to aim beyond the target. This is a good rule to follow in life. I realise that the era of the "killer app" has come to an end, but I feel we should really draw a lot more attention to innovation, rather than "gosh, see, we also have one like you". Also... marketing marketing marketing. Microsoft have built an empire on stealing, buying and mercilessly ripping off other people's ideas, and yet they come out looking like great innovators. All boils down to marketing. We really stink at it. We're a very geeky crowd generally, and I don't think the average geek sees much point in / use for marketing. But it is needed in order to truly succeed. A good product alone is not enough. As an example - Ubuntu remains a popular distro, and I believe a lot of its success is purely because it has a strong brand. Something named "PCLinuxOS" with complete reliance on word-of-mouth is unlikely to have as much chance of uptake among non-Linuxers as a well developed brand with a lot of press visibility such as Ubuntu. Hate it or love it, but it has earned its popularity. * |
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