14 DAY TRIAL // An updated Parted Magic has released. Parted Magic 5.3 comes with several updated packages, but also brings some changes. Parted Magic is no longer released as a USB Zip file version and a GRUB4DOS ISO is no longer being made available.
"Some other adjustments have been made to improve memory usage once again thanks to burdi01. We dropped Unionfs in favor of Unionfs-fuse," Patrick Verner, Parted Magic's maintainer, wrote in an announcement on the homepage.
"The main pmagic-5.3.sqfs is now one squashfs instead of the split up method. If anybody was having issues with G4L, give this version a try. Some other minor bugs were fixed," he added.
"We are no longer supporting or supplying a USB Zip file. Our official method for booting from USB is Unetbootin. People that know what they are doing shouldn't have any problem extracting the ISO image and executing the syslinux command," he announced.
The USB Zip file version is no longer offered as it proved confusing for some. Novice users would download the archive, unzip it to the USB drive and then expect it to work with no idea how make the drive bootable. To avoid confusion, Uneetbootin will be used for USB drive installs.
The GRUB4DOS ISO is no longer maintained since too few people were using it to warrant the time investment. The developers say that those who would need it could easily offer this booting option with a modified version of Parted Magic.
Highlights of Parted Magic 5.3:
· Linux kernel 2.6.34.5; · Busybox 1.17.1; · NTFS-3G 2010.8.8; · UNetbootin 471; · TrueCrypt 7.0; · G4L 34a; · FreeType 2.4.2; · udev 161; · LXTerminal 0.1.8.
Parted Magic 5.3 is available for download here on Softpedia.