usb stick formatter

[52ROSt]

I am in need of a usb stick formating application. However i cannot find one in the SoftwareCenter.

I appreiciate information of a name of such an application or any hint helping me to get such a small application.



Season greatings to all of you!

[ronw]

KDE Partition Manager and Gparted are popular.

[52ROSt]

Thanks for the information!

[DeMus]

mintstick -m iso
mintstick -m format

mintstick is a small program available in LinuxMint and can be used to either format a stick in various ways: FAT, NTFS, ext4, or you use it to "burn" an iso file onto it with which you can boot your computer.
When not available in Kubuntu it must be in the repository: http://packages.linuxmint.com since that is the only one I use apart of the Kubuntu one.

[52ROSt]

These are the tools I love in my Mint Debian machine!

Can we connect to the Mint packages?

Is there no system problems?

How can we connect?

I am using v14.04 LTS which is the same as v17.1 of Mint.

(I am newbie!!!)

[DeMus]

Well Ubuntu 14.04 is Mint 17, not 17.1.
I found this on ask.ubuntu:

Open a terminal (it's not scary at all) and type the following 3 lines of code:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'
sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
sudo apt-get update

After each line you press Enter. The first time it will ask for your password. Type it followed by another Enter.

After the update you can close the terminal and open your software-manager. In the search field type mintstick and it should be there. Install the right version (32 or 64 bit depending on your system and you can find it in your list of installed programs.
Success.

[52ROSt]

Thanks for your carefully thougth advice.

You are right with qiana (LM 17) but I am also right with rebecca (LM 17.1); both are based on ubuntu Trusty. However, 17.1, rebecca is with the KDE desktop environment.

Now, as I am using kubuntu I wonder now if connecting to qiana would create problems with my kubuntu KDE environment.

However I would love to be able to connect to Mint, because they have a few nice tools which I know from LM Debian installation on an very old PC.

Please advice me on the better connection: qiana (17) or rebecca (17.1).

[DeMus]

A few things.
Kubuntu is an OS which uses the KDE desktop. LinuxMint KDE also does that.

Mint comes in different flavors: Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE and KDE, just as Ubuntu has Unity, Gnome Shell, XFCE, LXDE and KDE (Kubuntu)
Differences are they all have another look and use different programs to do the same thing.

Kubuntu has version 14.04 which was the basis for LinuxMint 17 Qiana and 14.04.1 which is the basis for LinuxMint 17.1 Rebecca. All of these are LTS versions and are maitained till 2019. Mint will no longer be based on non-LTS versions, like Ubuntu 14.10.

Flavors and versions are two different things.

I wrote you a way to add the Mint repository to your Kubuntu OS. In that line:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'

it says qiana. When you use Kubuntu 14.04 then this is right, if you use 14.04.1 (updated version) then you should change qiana into rebecca so the repository matches the version you are using.
Don't forget to also type the other two lines I wrote you.

[SteveRiley]

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'
sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
sudo apt-get update

This could have unintended consequences. For example, say the folks at Mint recompile some package from source and increase the version number. If you have the Kubuntu version of this package on your machine, then next time you update your system, the version from Mint will be downloaded and installed. That version could likely not be compatible with the rest of the system, since the entire system isn't Mint. I would advise against this.

To answer the original question, the Partition Manager that's included with Kubuntu can easily handle USB memory sticks. I'd recommend using that.

[claydoh]

Mint KDE really is Kubuntu. It uses (K) ubuntu packages for about 95% of the packaging. There are some mint specific tools, but apart from theming and default application choices, there is little separating them from us.

I wanted to try out their package manager, it requires the removal of muon. I think trying to install muon in mint removes their tool. If you actually poke around the mint repo, there isn't an awful lot as they use Ubuntu for the heavy lifting, but Steve is right, there is always the possibility of breakage if they change versioning on something.

Sent from my cheap-assed Intel i700 tablet

[52ROSt]

@DeMus - Thanks for your detailed explanations of the differences of the Mint versions and the need to look also for the third digit. I do have kubuntu 14.04 and learned a lesson.

@SteveRiley and @claydoh - Thanks for your explanation and warnings. Although it is attempting to get some tools from the Mint repository, I will not mess up my system anymore.