GParted News Item 228

The GParted team is proud to announce the fifteenth anniversary of GParted.

The first public release of GParted was version 0.0.3 on August 26th, 2004. Over the past 15 years, much has happened. Following are some statistics:

• Over 245 people have contributed to GParted
• Available in over 60 different language translations
• Included in many GNU/Linux distributions
• Used in over 240 countries around the world
• Downloaded over 27 million times from SourceForge alone

To mark the occasion, questions were posed, and following are responses shared by some key contributors.

What do you like about GParted / Free Software?

Emmanuel Soundias - I like the fact that I.T. professionals as well as everyday non-professional computer users are able to use GParted. It is a professional software tool with a friendly interface, so that most computer users can use it. Of course, operations performed by GParted are rather special, out of the everday practice for many IT professionals as well as for most non-professional users.

I especially like that GParted seems to be a rather "strong" software, included in many popular Linux distributions, although without fancy features. This is evident by the very small number of problems reported in the support forum, most of them related to hardware issues.

15 years is a long time in the IT world. I love the fact that GParted is slowly but constantly changing following the IT reality, adapted to new hardware devices and software structures and including new useful features. This is achieved thanks to the contribution of the big Free Software community all over the world and especially to the numerous developers and testers that contribute by their knowledge, experience and time. Furthermore, GParted developers investigate and propose fixes and improvements to other free/open source related projects as well.

As a member of the GParted support team during 12 years (since 2007), I can feel the happiness of many users that had their problem solved, often saving their valuable data.

I'm happy to be part of this small but very effective team that runs successfully this useful project. Finally, I'd like to thank LarryT, former project administrator, who introduced me to the GParted project and to the Free Software world.

Mike Fleetwood - As a home user I like that Free Software is available at no cost, either up front or ongoing and these days no data mining. As a power user I like that there are lots of people that provide help in various ways, forums, how to guides etc. As a developer I like that ultimately I can go and look at the code and find out how something actually works and even go and fix it myself if necessary.

Curtis Gedak - The thing I like best about GParted is that it handles all the behind the scenes math and commands to resize and move partitions and file systems. This removes the extra effort I would expend to figure out the required terminal commands and options. I also appreciate being able to quickly access the latest GParted features by booting computers with GParted Live, which Steven Shiau graciously maintains. Overall I prefer Free Software because I can share it freely with friends, family, and co-workers.


Where is your development or support environment? (location/desktop/laptop/other details)

Mike Fleetwood - My primary system is my desktop in my study at home, a machine put together from components. It runs CentOS 7. Use VirtualBox virtualisation and have over 20 virtual machines with mostly multiple versions of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and CentOS plus a few other distributions too. Used for testing as needed.

Also have a VirtualBox CentOS 7 virtual machine on my $job's laptop. This is so that while commuting to and from work, for the 30 minutes each way on the tram, I can be looking into GParted.

Curtis Gedak - My development system is in my upstairs loft and is also the computer I use for everyday tasks. It is a custom built desktop computer running Kubuntu 16.04 LTS with a 28" LCD monitor, a quad-core processor, and six drives which enable me to readily test various features of GParted. I also have several older computers in addition to over 50 Virtual Machines which I use to test different hardware, operating systems, and partition / file system configurations. The older hardware is often donated to me by friends and family, for which I am grateful.


Why do you contribute to GParted?

Mike Fleetwood - GParted has become my niche in the Free Software world. It is my way of contributing back to the Free Software world.

Curtis Gedak - I believe GParted enables an easier path for people to try other operating systems, and hopefully discover the wonderful world of Free Software. By contributing to GParted I believe that in my own way I help to make the world just a little bit better.


This wraps up the responses provided by current GParted contributors. Please note that many others, not listed here, have made significant contributions. GParted is made possible by the users, the contributors, and by the greater Free Software community.

In conclusion the GParted team is pleased to celebrate 15 years of providing an easy-to-use graphical partition editor as Free Software that all can share and use. :-)

Curtis