It matters not. The general recommendation to use a live environment is for convenience - most users have one (the install USB) whereas they may not have a spare multi-boot linux environment.

You can do it if you're booted up to a different partition. Only the partition(s) which are currently mounted will be "locked", as well as certain special partitions (if any).

There's not any significant difference in risk one way or the other.

@syg00, IsaacKuo:

Thank you! Resizing/moving partitions were done successfully!

Now I noticed something rather odd after resizing and moving partitions with GParted:

https://ibb.co/tH96cJ2

Why is it showing 40GB used if I have nothing in that partition?

Does that mean after resizing/moving partitions around it will take up space as a side effect?

By default ext filesystems reserve 5% of the space in case it fills so the root user can login and fix things. That can be set to zero to recover that space - best not done on the system filesystem. If this a data-only filesystem, go right ahead.
Then of course the metadata for the filesystem itself occupies some (small) space - this is true for every filesystem ever invented.

Thanks!

So how do I go about setting the value to zero? This is a data only partition!

You'll note I didn't include that info. Better you learn that be told - exercise your favourite search engine.
If you want to post your command before running it, that's fine. The command itself can be run anytime, even if the filesystem contains files - it is non-destructive.

Thank you syg00!

Upon a quick Google search, I found a couple articles suggesting eliminating that 5% reserve is possible though it would produce increased disk fragmentation as a result.

I also found a comment suggesting leaving 2% reserved space as precaution in case disk fragmentation occurs.

Do you know how to set the percentage value of reserved space? Is it the "-m 0" value in "sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1"?

I don't know if you are super paranoid or not, but as has been said. Gparted is almost 100% fail-safe. Meaning it either succeeds or fails without harm.

That is not to say a user cannot make a mistake, but it usually does exactly as told unless there is a valid reason not. Just like your image where it shows the partition locked. It cannot do anything on the device that is active, so it prevents that.

The suggestion to do a backup first is because of the possibility of user error (and the very unlikely application error). Nothing can protect against everything, which is why ID 10 T errors are common in the IT world.

I have a very good suggestion for you, in light of your absolute timidity in trying things.

Turn off the computer and read a book. You will learn just as much.

If you really want to learn, then try things. How do humans learn? -- by doing, by making mistakes or succeeding, and learning from our experiences.

If you want your hand held for everything you do then I am tired of doing so. Your other thread about a failing drive insisted on having everything explained in detail and took over 50 posts to attempt to make a disk image and use photorec to try and recover after you changed the partition table as the first thing you did. While it is frustrating to make a mistake and then have to recover, we learn from our experiences.

Many tools are available, many people are willing to help, but we all get tired of the timid little boy who will do nothing for himself but ask for approval, just like we get tired of a know-it-all who always has the only right answer. Being in the middle is best. Being willing to search, try, educate yourself, and make an effort is worthwhile.

1 members found this post helpful.

Man, some of you on this forum are weird. If you don't want to help then just don't reply.

Are you here to help solving Linux problems or are you trying to be a sudo psychologist?

This is the first time I have this kind of problem on online forums.

Your replies here has nothing to do with my initial question.

And FYI, I have taken zero advice from your sudo knowledge about human nature.

Bye!

1 members found this post helpful.

The comments were uncalled for IM(NS)HO.

As for concerns with fragmentation they are largely of a time past. The allocation schema for (particularly) ext4 have evolved to ameliorate the situation. And yes, I know the manpage still mentions it - they are maintained separately to the code itself. Unless you consistently run your filesystem above (say) 98% full, 0% is fine for data partitions in my experience.

Thanks for the info!

I am very likely going to use the entire disk space of that partition since it's such a small partition after doing the resizing (only 800GB) therefore your information is useful.

This is very easy to do with LVM. You would format the two spaces as physical volumes and then add them to the same Volume Group. You can then create logical volumes from the VG. You would install a Linux distro to one or more LVs.

There is no need to move partitions around if you don't want to.

You can easily do this with LVM.

1 members found this post helpful.