What is a good, easy to use partition manager for Linux?
I have been using Partition Magic for Windows for a while, but I was wondering if there is anything that good (or better) for Linux.

Also, I have a lot of large media files on my FAT32 partition from Windows, and I was wondering if there would be any advantages to switching them over to my Linux paritition. I will probably only view them in Linux (that is, if I don't have a Windows relapse), but the Windows compatibility is nice. And seeing as to the fact that my Windows partition (43 gigs) is almost full, they would be a pain to cross over to my Linux partition (11 gigs) because I would have to repartition a lot along the way because it is so small.

Any help, ideas, or suggestions here are welcome.

Also, has anyone had any luck in getting Kazaa or Kazaa Lite running in Wine? Does Kazaa's spyware function in Linux (I doubt it, but just wanna be sure)?

And, I've had problems with Wine, and I want to reinstall it to maybe alleviate them, but every time I rerun ./tools/wineinstall it says something like "Wine is already configured, so I'll skip that". I want to remove the configuration so it redoes that too. I have deleted ~/.wine , so how do I remove its configuration that I've already done?

Finally, does WineX actually run games better that Windows ME? My main fixes needed are Starcraft and WarCraft III, and I may need some Counter-Strike also. I have a 933 MHz Pentium III, 128 MB of RAM, and a 64 MB GeForce 4 MX-440 (with NVidia drivers installed WITHOUT ANY HELP go me :-), so performance definitely is a big concern.

Thanks for any help!

-Ryan

As far as partitioning I just use 'fdisk' and 'mkfs' for managing partitions. But if you really need a GUI then try http://part-gui.sourceforge.net/. But be careful as its stated that it is development software and there are no garuntees that it wont hose your drive. I would reccomend however that you plan your partition scheme ahead of time with linux.

Red Hat 9.0 possibly comes with its own partition manager. I know that Mandrake 9.0 does since I use Mandrake 9.0. If so, I would use it and forget about Partition Magic altogether.

Regarding all of your other questions, instead of Wine, how about Win4Lin? Win4Lin will allow you to run the entire Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME operating system under Linux as if it were a Linux application. You then install your Windows programs under the Windows you installed under Linux.

I have never tried the programs that you have mentioned above, since I don't use any of them. However, I suspect that most if not all of them will work, considering that I have made the following work: Microsoft Word 2000; Chessmaster 5000; Windows Media Player; Computer Associates Antivirus 6.X; Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1; and many others. Win4Lin even supports MSDOS mode and DirectX 8. The only things that I have seen not work are: Drivespace, which you won't need since Win4Lin provides a much better alternative; the old MSDOS VGA graphics mode games and the old DOS protected mode programs.

Win4Lin does simulate a very generic and somewhat limited "computer" that Windows then "installs" on, so anything hardware that wants to communicate with Windows through anything other than COM1, COM2 or the LPT ports won't be to. Consequently, things like CD writer software won't work. However, typically, Linux has replacements for that kind of stuff. I don't know how that would affect Kazaa, if at all? The upside of this is that Win4Lin's generic computer simulation actually creates a more stable installed Windows. This would no doubt include the very rickety Windows ME.

The overall situation is this: whatever you wanted to do with Wine, you have a much better chance of succeeding with Win4Lin. Unfortunately, Win4Lin costs and is not GPL. For details on how to get Win4Lin, go to http://www.netraverse.com

Considering that I was able to make Win4Lin work, it is probably something that you would want to test to see if it could be made to work for you. If it does, then I would put everything under the Linux partition and get rid of the Windows FAT32 partition altogether. Given your situation, you would need to make a backup of your Windows partition and then convert your entire hard drive to Linux. Alternatively, you might considering getting another larger hard drive since it seems that your hard drive is becoming rather cramped. Linux doesn't have Windows' limitations on how large hard drives can be!

Regarding Partition Types:
Well almost anything is better than FAT32, NTFS is leaps and bounds over FAT32. Will you see a noticable difference in performance between any of the filesystems, probebly not although the nice thing about any filesystem in Linux is that there is no need for defragmenting because it is smarter about how it places files on the physical disk. Other than that you would be just fine mounting the FAT32 drive under linux because it seems like it is just for storage...personally I wouldnt go through the trouble of offloading 43 gigs so that I could use a linux filesystem. I am curious however when you say "windows compatability" becasuse A) if you are talking about not being able to read ext2 filesystems in Linux then you should take a look at this: http://www.ext2fs-anywhere.com/n_ext2fs_main.htm and B) if you are talking about getting them from your linux PC to another PC then you can always use Samba/NFS if you have a network.

Regarding Wine:
"so performance definitely is a big concern"
-Well then emulation is not going to suit your needs, when have you ever known emulation to be faster than the actual system? Under some circumstances WineX will run certain games better than it did on some windows versions but not overall. I personally use WineX and it works great with the supported games that I have gotten to work but expect glitches not everything will work right away but if you pay up to transgaming them you can post on their boards and someone will be able to provide you with a possible solution.

Regarding Kazaa:
I dont know if Kazaa would work because I dont know if wine/wineX emulates windows network functionality. Dont worry about it anyway because GTK-Gnutella is awesome and if you really want to search the FastTrack network (the same one that Kazaa searches) download mldonkey, it supposedly has support, but I have always been fine using gtk-gnutella.