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Is there some way to quickly format a USB pendrive in KDE (with a GUI interface), without having to open the main "KDE Partition Manager"?
In particular I'm most interested in something like a Dolphin plugin or a Plasmoid.
If it matters, I'm on Kubuntu 12.04 with KDE 4.10.
New answer for an old question.
Mintstick from Linux Mint is the quickest, containing two separate gui tools, one to format an USB drive ("USB Stick Formatter"), one to write an image on it ("USB Image Writer").
To install it in older Ubuntu
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsvetko.tsvetkov/trusty-backports
or
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsvetko.tsvetkov/xenial-backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mintstick
For Ubuntu 18.04, until a newer version is launched along with an Ubuntu 18.04-based Linux Mint, download latest version 1.3.8 from here.
Open a terminal at the location of the download and do
sudo dpkg -i mintstick_1.3.8_all.deb
Install the missing dependencies.
If needed do
sudo apt --fix-broken install
then do again sudo dpkg -i mintstick_1.3.8_all.deb.
Run it by typing "USB Stick Formatter" in a launcher - or mintstick -m format in terminal.
In case that cannot be installed on your system, a good alternative is gnome-multi-writer. It is able to format a stick before writing, but cannot simply format (without writing anything). For that, one can use "Disks" (gnome-disk-utility), which is a bit quicker than Gparted or the KDE Partition Manager.
If the usb stick already contains a live Linux, it is a bit trickier: first, select "Format Disk" from the top right corner (NOT "Format partition" ),
then select "Partitioning: No partitioning".
And only then select Additional partitioning options - "Format partition" , FAT, Next, Format.
I can verify that mkusb works in 12.04.1 and 12.04.5 iso files and I think will also work in a corresponding installed Kubuntu system. It can not only
but also
There are also other features of mkusb, the main feature is to
See the following links
help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb
help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/wipe
If you run standard Ubuntu live, you need an extra instruction to get the repository Universe. (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu have the repository Universe activated automatically.)
sudo add-apt-repository universe # only for standard Ubuntu # 14.04 and newer
sudo add-apt-repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ universe' # 12.04
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa # and press Enter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi
ubuntu-12.04.1-desktop-amd64.isoandubuntu-12.04.5-desktop-i386.isofiles and can test with them what works, and it is likely to work also with the corresponding Kubuntu files...