Advanced package tool, or APT, is a free-software user interface that works with core libraries to handle the installation and removal of software on Debian and Debian-based Linux distributions. APT simplifies the process of managing software on Unix-like computer systems by automating the retrieval, configuration and installation of software packages, either from precompiled files or by compiling source code.
Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk, memory card or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems. The first part of the formatting process that performs basic medium preparation is often referred to as "low-level formatting". Partitioning is the common term for the second part of the process, dividing the device into several sub-devices and, in some cases, writing information to the device allowing an operating system to be booted from it. The third part of the process, usually termed "high-level formatting" most often refers to the process of generating a new file system. In some operating systems all or parts of these three processes can be combined or repeated at different levels and the term "format" is understood to mean an operation in which a new disk medium is fully prepared to store files. Some formatting utilities allow distinguishing between a quick format, which does not erase all existing data and a long option that does erase all existing data.
fdisk is a command-line utility for disk partitioning. It has been part of DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and early versions of Microsoft Windows, as well as certain ports of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD and macOS for compatibility reasons. Windows 2000 and its successors have replaced fdisk with a more advanced tool called diskpart.
cfdisk is a Linux partition editor, similar to fdisk, but with a different, curses-based user interface. It is part of the util-linux package of Linux utility programs.
SystemRescue is a Linux distribution for x86-64 and IA-32 computers. The primary purpose of SystemRescue is to repair unbootable or otherwise damaged computer systems after a system crash. SystemRescue is not intended to be used as a permanent operating system. It runs from a Live CD, a USB flash drive or any type of hard drive. It was designed by a team led by François Dupoux, and is based on Arch Linux since version 6.0. Starting with version 6.0, it has systemd as its init system.
GNU Parted is a free partition editor, used for creating and deleting partitions. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising hard disk usage, copying data between hard disks, and disk imaging. It was written by Andrew Clausen and Lennert Buytenhek.
fstab is a system file commonly found in the directory /etc on Unix and Unix-like computer systems. In Linux, it is part of the util-linux package. The fstab file typically lists all available disk partitions and other types of file systems and data sources that may not necessarily be disk-based, and indicates how they are to be initialized or otherwise integrated into the larger file system structure.
CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system to install and upgrade applications.
Disk Utility is a system utility for performing disk and disk volume-related tasks on the macOS operating system by Apple Inc.
The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of partition tables of a physical computer storage device, such as a hard disk drive or solid-state drive, using universally unique identifiers (UUIDs), which are also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs). Forming a part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard, it is nevertheless also used for some BIOSs, because of the limitations of master boot record (MBR) partition tables, which use 32 bits for logical block addressing (LBA) of traditional 512-byte disk sectors.
GParted is a GTK front-end to GNU Parted and an official GNOME partition-editing application. GParted is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking, and copying disk partitions and their file systems. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks, and mirroring one partition with another. It can also be used to format a USB drive.
NILFS or NILFS2 is a log-structured file system implementation for the Linux kernel. It was developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) CyberSpace Laboratories and a community from all over the world. NILFS was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
util-linux is a standard package distributed by the Linux Kernel Organization for use as part of the Linux operating system. A fork, util-linux-ng, was created when development stalled, but as of January 2011 has been renamed back to util-linux, and is the official version of the package.
Wubi is a free software Ubuntu installer, that was the official Windows-based software, from 2008 until 2013, to install Ubuntu from within Windows, to a single file within an existing Windows partition.
gpart is a software utility which scans a storage device, examining the data in order to detect partitions which may exist but are absent from the disk's partition tables. Gpart was written by Michail Brzitwa of Germany. The release on the author's website is now older than the releases some distributions are using. It appears that Michail Brzitwa does not actively maintain the code, instead the various distributions appear to maintain their own versions.
The BIOS boot partition is a partition on a data storage device that GNU GRUB uses on legacy BIOS-based personal computers in order to boot an operating system, when the actual boot device contains a GUID Partition Table (GPT). Such a layout is sometimes referred to as BIOS/GPT boot.
Cobbler is a Linux provisioning server that facilitates and automates the network-based system installation of multiple computer operating systems from a central point using services such as DHCP, TFTP, and DNS. It can be configured for PXE, reinstallations, and virtualized guests using Xen, KVM or VMware. Cobbler interacts with the koan program for re-installation and virtualization support. koan and Cobbler use libvirt to integrate with different virtualization software. Cobbler is able to manage complex network scenarios like bridging on a bonded Ethernet link.
FIPS - is an MS-DOS program for non-destructive splitting of File Allocation Table (FAT) hard disk partitions.
XZ Utils is a set of free software command-line lossless data compressors, including the programs lzma and xz, for Unix-like operating systems and, from version 5.0 onwards, Microsoft Windows. For compression/decompression the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is used. XZ Utils started as a Unix port of Igor Pavlov's LZMA-SDK that has been adapted to fit seamlessly into Unix environments and their usual structure and behavior.
GNOME Disks is a graphical front-end for udisks. It can be used for partition management, S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, benchmarking, and software RAID. An introduction is included in the GNOME Documentation Project.
