A New, Easy To Use Disk Formatter For GNOME

The file-system format menu includes options for all computers, for Linux computers, and for Apple computers. If selecting for all computers it will format the drive as FAT32, EXT2 for all Linux computers, and HFS+ for all Apple computers. GNOME Format also allows a specific file-system to be specified. EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS, and other basic file-systems are supported. There is currently no support for formatting to an NTFS file-system using GNOME Format with the NTFS-3G module, but it may be on the road-map for a future objective. The volume name can also be specified with the file-system type.

Under the options area is the ability to encrypt the disk and then to enter the pass-phrase for the LUKS encryption. That ends off all of the options currently available within GNOME Format. Some of the items left on their road-map include finishing the formatting framework, integrating the framework fully into the user-interface, adapt the floppy disk formatting support from GFloppy, and fixing GTK+ and HAL bugs. It would also be nice to see GNOME Format integrated with Nautilus so that it is accessible from right-clicking on a removable device.

For the GNOME 2.26 release in March we are already past the period for being able to propose new modules for inclusion, so the earliest that GNOME Format could officially enter the GNOME package set would be this September with GNOME 2.28. Perhaps though we may see GNOME Format adopted earlier than that by some Linux distributions.

For more information on this simple disk formatting utility, visit the GNOME Format web-page. From our initial tests of gnome-format, it has worked out quite well.