Posted on Tuesday 17th of April 2007 at 11:58 in Linux

Windows migration assistant - Ubuntu Feisty Fawn's secret weapon

Having a read through the Ubuntu Feisty announcements I noticed a clever little addition that had previously remained below my radar - the Windows Migration Assistant (WMA). Yet another reason to try and entice XP users over.

The WMA is quoted as a tool that "recognises Internet Explorer bookmarks, Firefox favourites, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, and Yahoo IM contacts, and imports them into Ubuntu during installation". Good work there guys, so if an XP user wishes to install Ubuntu (or dual boot it) they can expect a bundle of familiar things to come over with them - that's nice.



This will of course sound good to those of us who recently read that Windows XP is going to be retired in 2008. I'm not impressed with Vista at all and nor is my girlfriend who normally loves over-the-top aesthetics. I'm just tired of every move I make being watched and think that moving away from Windows as a main environment is becoming an increasingly viable reality.

What popular distros like this really need is a never-ending desire for higher usability, proficient migration tools (to allow Windows users to move across without a headache) and for everything to just "work". We're so nearly there and I'm hoping that reviewing Feisty in a day or two will show me what I think is still missing.

 

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