Recently Emmanuele Bassi asked for help on reviving GFloppy as it’s old and mostly useless. Paul Betts and Riccardo Setti (giskard) accepted the invitation and are working on gnome-format, an utility that will be able to format any removable disk (USB pendrives, etc.) Here’s some screenshots but remember that gnome-format is in alpha stage!
I don’t like the filesystem selection menu, but it will be probably changed to contain something like “Compatible with XXX (FS-NAME)”, so it will be usable be geek and non-geek users.
Marco Barisione's blog 
Non ci posso credere! Pur non avendo letto il post di Emmanuele qualche giorno fa ho iniziato esattamente lo stesso progetto (media formatter basato su HAL in grado di gestire floppy, usb stick, zip e tutto quello per cui venga scritto un backend). La GUI poi e’ dannatamente simile a questa 🙂
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grazie, grazie, grazie.
non ho potuto provarlo, adesso vedo di metterci le mani sopra. se tutto funziona, lo infilerò nelle gnome-utils nel prossimo ciclo di sviluppo, quindi. 😀
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Non mi piace per niente quel “Tipo: Compatibile con …”, ma che siamo deficienti?
Io voglio specificare il filesystem (e non come secondo tipo di scelta andando a spulciare i menù)!
Non semplifichiamo troppo le cose…
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@encelo:
Io infatti ho proposto a giskard di mettere “Compatible with Windows (FAT-32)” o qualcosa del genere, in questo modo è chiaro a tutti quello che vuol dire.
Poi non sono sicuro che si possa usare “Windows”, probabilmente è necessario usare “Microsoft Windows®”.
Non si può neanche usare “Linux”, come spiegato in questo thread sulla foundation-list.
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@encelo: sei nella minoranza che sa cosa sia un filesystem e che ne esistono diversi. hai perso. mi spiace, sarà per la prossima volta. 🙂
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Please add UDF support for formatting removable disks (mostly USB-Sticks (pendrives)!
Like WriteUDF for Windows.
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@Emmanuele
E’ esattamente per questo che io non sono per la massificazione di Linux, profetizzata e augurata da tutti.
Non mi piace che il sistema venga snaturato per venire incontro agli utenti, e l’utente che deve avvicinarsi alla sua filosofia, alla sua storia, alla sua evoluzione naturale.
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I was surprised to find this today, and I thought I’d leave some comments (spiacente, non posso parlare italiano!)
To the comment of adding (FAT32) to the “Compatible with Windows” dialog, I think that’s reasonable, although it makes the dialog more ugly, I would’ve preferred to keep the filesystems out of the easy part of the dialog but if people want it, that’s alright.
As to using the word ‘Linux’ in the formatter, I thought it was ok because I’m specifically referring to the Linux kernel. Thoughts?
@reviczky: Why would one want to do this on a regular basis? Do you know the Linux command to execute this?
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Thanks for working on this! It’s been a sorely needed part of the desktop. Please add support for LUKS-enabled encrypted filesystems. It should be pretty straightforward using cryptsetup-luks. Thanks a bunch!
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Personalmente, cambierei il termine “Format” di formattazione in “inizializzazione” del disco/supporto. Anche l’icona del floppy è inappropriata, ma non credo ci siano dubbi a riguardo.
L’applicazione quindi “inizializza” dischi, ovvero cancella i dati e crea un file system compatibile con vari sistemi operativi. Ogni riferimento a questi richiede il riferimento di copyright. Probabilmente anche se si riferisce a VFAT32.
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Paul, Riccardo, till some days ago I was working at the very same project developing a formatting tool backend based (a floppy backend, a memory-stick backend, an ipod backend… :). Yesterday I completed a first version of the gui-backends infrastructure, so I put the tarball online. I would be glad if you will look at it and grab as much code as you want. To test it configure it with –enable-debug=yes option and run the tool from /src directory, it will find and load the floppy backend by its own. oh, the floppy backend is still empty, just two testing methods 🙂
http://www.rootshell.be/~loopback/gnome-media-formatter/
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The correct configure option has a double ‘-‘ at the beginning.
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I would say that adding eg. (FAT32) to the text in the selection box is essential for non-geek users since this is often mentioned in manuals.
For example when you got an MP3 player that accepts SD cards the manual states that it should be formatted in the FAT32 file system. So this information is probably more important to the non-geek user than to the geek.
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Please make sure to add just a Change Label Option that integrates with this program for people that have an old memory stick they want to change the label on.
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I cant say that FAT32 is compatible with all filesystems. It has many problems(i.e. with codepages), 4GB max capacity for file, and overall capacity. The most compatible is i think ext2/3(you can find drivers more most OS’es), but yes, there problem with windows users and cameras. And NTFS with stable working ntfs-3G(which will be included into MacOSX trough MacFuse can be also interesting, because this filesystem is much more better than FAT32. You should also remember that FAT is patented by Micro$oft
So the only compatible withh all Operating Systems, and really Free is imho ISO-9660 😉
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@luca: I contemplated iPods too, but I think for a first release (and in general), iPods are a mess we don’t want to touch; there’s way too many configurations of iPod to try to figure out a way to format all of them. The backend thing is something I just implemented as well, but without dynamic loading (ie it’s just in code). Thanks for your help!
@evil_core: The patent issue is there but I think that it can be dealt with once someone seriously tries to claim it. In the meantime, it’s the most compatible fs right now for small devices; I’m probably going to make it do some logic as to which fs to pick based on the device.
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