Parted Magic - Freeware that's now shareware !

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Feandur, Sep 29, 2013.

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  1. Feandur

    Feandur Registered Member

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    So, when I go to download the latest version of Parted Magic I find it's no longer freeware but shareware.....

    http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads

    Now costs US$4.99

    only a little while ago it was freeware, and I can't find any particular notice about the change.

    so was what gives?

    hopefully this is not a hijacked site?

    If not, then hand into the pocket again.......

    -cheers,
    feandur
     
  2. safeguy

    safeguy Registered Member

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    Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQzNTI
     
  3. J_L

    J_L Registered Member

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  4. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Well there's always GParted.
     
  5. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    IMO a really bad move. When you offer a pretty good product for free for a long time and then you start asking for money, you will not get a lot of good will from your users. And I am willing to bet you will not get a good deal of money either.

    As for me, I used Parted Magic occasionally in the past, but I am not willing to pay for such a product. GParted is still free and I have no problems with adding it to any live CD/DVD I wish.
     
  6. Snoop3

    Snoop3 Registered Member

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    i wouldn't mind paying $10/year if PM had an install to hdd option. supposedly the frugal install is easy if you read the forum threads over there but most of us (not linux nerds) have no experience messing around with grub etc.
     
  7. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    Have to say I'm rather disgusted at the responses mentioned on Distrowatch. Yeah, having to deal with capitalism sucks, but it's not optional. People have to make money or they get crushed out of existence. Let a guy make a living off the fruits of his labor for crying out loud.

    (This holds especially true in today's economy IMO.)
     
  8. J_L

    J_L Registered Member

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    I must say, it's quite enlightening hearing the same old obvious message repeated in this thread with personal insult added. :rolleyes:
    Clearly you didn't read the responses rationally, so no point for me repeating myself.
     
  9. Feandur

    Feandur Registered Member

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    Thanks safeguy, I had absolutely no idea what went down with Patrick Verner and family. My wife works for the QLD government, and many workers have lost their jobs due to government budget cuts.

    Remember that scene in the 5th element where a minion comes to the Gary Oldman character and says they have to sack 250,000...and he says ..sack 500,000. Same thing here.....except the number in our case was 14,000.

    It's like being in a war - you come to work and the person sitting in the desk next to you gets an email to pack their bags....So far, 2 rounds of sackings, 1 more to go [probably at Christmas].

    Now that I'm up to speed with the situation, and all is legit', I have absolutely no problem what so ever with paying for Parted Magic. I can't do without it.

    In fact , I aim to be generous with my donation, and encourage all Linux users here at Wilders to do the same, and give gererously.

    -cheers,
    feandur.
     
  10. Feandur

    Feandur Registered Member

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    May I also add that an advantage in lurking / posting at Wilders is that sometimes you get to know the developer, if not his circumstances, as well as the application.

    And, somehow, that makes a real difference.

    -cheers,
    feandur.
     
  11. AlexC

    AlexC Registered Member

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    Good for the developer! Not very people can work for free, and no one can demand that.

    I don't mind paying 5 dollars for Parted Magic. It's a very affordable and fair price. Besides that i know that there are many technicians/computer repair shops using that tool (and others) to make money (many times charging high prices) , and are incapable to give a single dollar to the developer(s). Pure greed and exploitation of the good will of others.
     
  12. TheKid7

    TheKid7 Registered Member

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    So each time that a new version is released, you have to pay $5 to get the new version?
     
  13. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    Apparently, yes. I really don't get it why he didn't try to come up with some sort of a commercial version (with updates for minor versions being free, and having to pay again when he decides to release a major version). Right now it seems that you need to pay again every time a bugfix version is released. :thumbd:
     
  14. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    I'm looking at the older versions of PM I have. I found some descriptions: i686, i586, i486 etc. But in real life the ones that are supposed to boot don't.

    Are there any landmarkings as far as hardware & OS compatibility? Let me further try & clarify. Try this version x for XP, this version for vista, this for 7 & this one for 8. This version for dual core, another for i3i5i7s etc.

    In the past I've just shuffled them around till one boots.

    I've also had to use Linux Live CDs for GParted.

    I'm thinking it's probably just shuffling that works and it'd be almost guess work to nail down specifically.
     
  15. SirDrexl

    SirDrexl Registered Member

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    Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose though? If it runs from its own portable drive, it can work with any of the installed drives on the system. If it were running from the system drive, you wouldn't be able to reformat/erase that drive. There are other things you could do with it like resize partitions, but all I really use it for is the system drive. And as a repair tool, obviously it's no good if your system drive won't boot in the first place.
     
  16. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    well said.

     
  17. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    yeah if its true, then I think this would be the reason why I won't use it anymore. I don't mind paying $10 per year, but I do mind if have to pay $5 every one month or so for every update.

     
  18. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    Good. People need to make money, or they will just vanish.
    It has happened to too many Linux resources recently.
    Mrk
     
  19. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Looked into my heart & bought a copy $4.99.
     
  20. Snoop3

    Snoop3 Registered Member

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    reason is i've got an imaging or restore utility (installed on a hidden partition but is available in the grub menu) built in to my netbook that's actually Winclon and it works fantastic except for the fact that it seems it only allows to store one backup winclon image per available partition on the HDD. i would like to be able to boot to PM + Clonezilla installed on its own partition from the HDD so that i could select from several WinXP images to test programs etc without having to re-install programs all the time.

    plus booting PM and Clonezilla from a USB flash and then restoring from another external HDD to the onboard HDD takes about 15 minutes, whereas the Winclon that's installed on the HDD only takes about 3 minutes. in the rare event that i might need to reformat the entire HDD then i would use GParted or something else from a flash drive but most of the time now the premium is on backup and restore partition images as fast as possible.
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2013
  21. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Copy of my receipt (without any personal stuff.)
     

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  22. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

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    Cheers, I deleted my post as I worked out it by going through payment process, but not finishing it.
     
  23. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

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    I don't mind paying an upgrade fee for new features (and of course defects should be fixed free of charge, like any purchased product).

    Cheers, Nick
     
  24. Snoop3

    Snoop3 Registered Member

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    the desktop on Parted Magic is pretty cool. nice and uncluttered plus Conky is installed, which i never could figure out how to do on ubuntu.
     
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