[devils casper]

Boot up from PartedMagic LiveCD and shrink /dev/hda4. Free up around 1GB space and merge it in /dev/hda3.
In case it doesn't allow to shrink/merge, post the output of fdisk -l command here.

an aside: i had the impression apt-get was deprecated, and aptitude was the new thing?

No. apt-get and aptitude are two different Package Managers and most of Graphical Package Managers ( Adept, Synaptic, KManager ) are based on apt-get only.

[memius]

i should have mentioned; i'm on a powerpc, not an x86. parted magic doesn't seem to work on my machine. any tips? i can't find a powerpc version of parted magic.

also, to my embarrassment, i found i had this exact same problem a year and a half ago:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/deb...ion-100-a.html

[devils casper]

I have to search for Partition Manager that supports PowerPC too. I will let you know soon.

[memius]

thank you for your help! in the meantime, i will try to delete some of the largest files and see if that helps.

[ozar]

You could take a look at PowerPC RescueCD. I've never used it so can't say how well it will work.

[devils casper]

PowerPC RescueCD should work fine. Parted is available in that CD.