install gparted on Ubuntu 8.10

[lazer100]

On 17-Sep-12 05:12:10 Doug wrote:
>On 09/16/2012 03:53 PM, lazer100 wrote:
>> On 17-Sep-12 04:41:11 Doug wrote:
>>> On 09/16/2012 02:50 PM, lazer100 wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I am unable to install gparted on Ubuntu 8.10,
>>>>
>>> /snip/
>>>> how do I install this?
>>>>
>>>> thanx
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You'll be better off downloading a live version of GParted or Partition
>>> Magic and burning to
>>> a CD.  You can't mess with the partitions on a disk on which you are
>>> running an OS, so
>>> if you burn a CD, you can do partitioning on any hard drive on the
>>> system from there.
>>> --doug
>> I want to dabble with an external USB drive, I want to zero the drive using
>> dd and /dev/zero,
>>
>> I need gparted to determine the device name of the drive, I'm in fact only
>> going to use gparted in a read only way,
>>
>> is there any other way to determine the device name of the drive,
>> something like /dev/sdb

>If you have Dolphin, or whatever Ubuntu uses as an equivalent, it
>may tell you what the partition name is, as you go and click on
>each partition.  If not, after you have snapped on each partition,
>noting what size it is for comparison with the next step, open
>a terminal and type df -h.

>You will get an output like this:

>[doug at Linux1 ~]$ df -h
>Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>/dev/sda9              12G  7.8G  3.7G  69% /
>/dev/sda11            208G   14G  195G   7% /home
>/dev/sda8              30G   66M   30G   1% /media/sda8
>/dev/sda7             122G  2.0G  114G   2% /media/disk
>/dev/sdb5              39G  188M   37G   1% /media/disk-1
>/dev/sda6              25G  500M   23G   3% /media/disk-2
>/dev/sda1              62G   17G   46G  27% /media/Windows
>/dev/sdb1              59G   52M   56G   1% /media/disk-3
>/dev/sdc1             3.8G  536M  3.3G  14% /media/disk-4

>Now you can see what everything is, and what the /dev name is

there is no program dolphin or Dolphin,

if I try to install this with sudo apt-get it wont install, 
its as if someone has disconnected the support framework for 8.10,

I dont like using later versions of Ubuntu because it is becoming
too much like Windows, with too much automatic downloading of stuff
etc unasked. Ubuntu 8.10 is the optimal version of Ubuntu IMHO.

I dont see why they cannot just leave that stuff online,
webspace is cheap, I own some URLs myself and have at least
250G of server space for a few dollars a month,

its like there is an agenda to shepherd everyone towards 
things they dont want.


when I try 

df -h

I get:


Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3             9.7G  2.5G  6.8G  27% /
tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /lib/init/rw
varrun                2.0G   84K  2.0G   1% /var/run
varlock               2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /var/lock
udev                  2.0G  2.9M  2.0G   1% /dev
tmpfs                 2.0G  104K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
lrm                   2.0G  2.4M  2.0G   1%
/lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1             7.5G  5.8G  1.8G  78% /media/QUICK
/dev/sda1              49G   43G  6.8G  87% /media/disk

but its not showing the system drive which is about 500G, that must be
/dev/sda
and it doesnt show the 1 terabyte drive I want to zero, which is unformatted
currently:

I began trying to wipe the drive with Windows software which is why it is
unformatted,
but that was using some complicated algorithm and would take many weeks to
complete!

when I just wanted the drive to be zeroed, so I decided to try that with dd,
something
like:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx

where /dev/sdx would be the underlying drive,

unfortunately if I try tab completion with /dev/ ie to press tab after this,
it lists various things but none of the drives,

I think that is a defect with the implementation of tab completion,

really the underlying drives should be built in when you boot up, like with
Windows,

and also a partition manager really should be built into the default system,
as it is fundamental to using an operating system

eg it is with Windows,