[nolok]

He is not talking about the article but the stack overflow question and answer of parent; and the point of that is to resize the root partition without booting into another OS, not to wipe or migrate to memory (ergo the question being asked: "How to shrink root filesystem without booting a livecd").

You can do that just fine on Windows, hell you can even do it with a nice GUI using computer management.

[heavenlyblue]

Yeah, but the Linux method is so much more generic; so can be used for more than just downsizing the partition.

[mehrdadn]

It's far more generic but also practically useless for an end-user. Really, its only use seems to be for someone who is a remote sysadmin of some sort. You have to stop pretty much everything on the computer, and still go through a reboot. The only difference thing it buys you is being able to stay SSH'd at the cost of wasting so much more time and going through so much more risk and inconvenience. On Windows you'd just shrink and keep using the system as usual.

[simias]

>It's far more generic but also practically useless for an end-user.

Do end-users really mess with partitioning usually (outside of formatting brand new disks I suppose)? I'm not asking rhetorically, I suppose there must be a use case if MS implemented this (tricky) feature but I can't really imagine any of my non-techies friends and relative decide to shrink a partition (actually most of them probably aren't aware of the concept of partition in the first place).

[nolok]

Replacing your hard drive by a larger one, duplicate partitions and then resize them is very common in the windows end user world, including with root partition (eg replace by a ssd, or a larger ssd). There are lots of paid tools to help do that, notably the duplicate part.

Now personnaly I find it weird, I would rather use the excuse to wipe and start clean if root, and for non root just making the partition you want and copy the content instead feels cleaner, but is it fairly common nonetheless.

They indeed don't know the concept of partitions, but they google "replace my hard drive by a larger one" and follow a guide usually (and such guide contains link to a specific duplicate took they can buy, of course).

[mehrdadn]

"End-user" is not a synonym for "layman". Are you a developer? Do you work on your laptop? Great, you're an end-user.

More generally, I was trying to approximate "the set of users who aren't solely sysadmins of remote systems". Substitute for it whatever word you see fit.

[simias]

I fully expect a developer to be able to follow the instructions given in the post then. It's not more complicated than your average framework or build system.

[mehrdadn]

> I fully expect a developer to be able to follow the instructions given in the post then. It's not more complicated than your average framework or build system.

And I never suggested a developer would be incapable of following these. Seems like you got so sidetracked in arguing that you forgot what the discussion was actually about. See my original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19357672

[sgc]

I recently installed ubuntu and there was no warning that the previous (many years ago) functionality of a default swap sized large enough to allow for hibernation was no longer the case. I installed using defaults without much thought because of course why wouldn't hibernation be possible using the default. Now I want to resize my partitions.

[laumars]

I thought you'd still need to reboot on Windows? Last time I tried to do any changes to the system partition I had to reboot for it to take effect.

If this is still the case then it's not really a far comparison to Windows because you could then do the same thing from a boot media in Linux (ie boot into it, resize and you're done). In fact you probably could also do that via a GUI (maybe gparted?).

In any case I do agree that Linux does still leave a lot to be desired when it comes to making some of the more advanced file system operations far more complicated for end users than they need to be.

[mehrdadn]

> I thought you'd still need to reboot on Windows?

Not if all you're doing is shrinking from the end. When was the last time you tried? I'm guessing the XP days?

[laumars]

> I'm guessing the XP days?

To be fair, it might have been. I'm not a heavy Windows user but the fact I can't recall the last time I resized the system volume probably says more about how long ago it was.

[mehrdadn]

I'm glad you at least phrased it as a question rather than as an assertion then! There is little more infuriating than a *nix fan blasting Windows in 2019 based on their experience with it 15 years ago.

[zerr]

Can't you do the same (in Linux) e.g. with GParted?