Migrating from Windows to Ubuntu
I was primarily a Windows user, before I started to play around with Ubuntu. First off, I installed it on my home laptop, to see how well it would work… I was thoroughly impressed. Of course, on this laptop, I didn’t need anything but a browser, pidgin, and the basic Office suite. The real test was going to be switching to Ubuntu at work. Migrating away from the beast, Outlook, to Thunderbird / Lightning. Surprisingly, it was very easy:
- Install Thunderbird on your Windows box (the one with Outlook)
- Fire it up, and you’ll get the option to Import - follow the steps to import from Outlook
- After the mail is imported, browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\(username)\. Copy the folder with the random letters.
- Now once you have your Ubuntu box running, and have Thunderbird installed, browse to your home folder /home/(username)/.mozilla-thunderbird. In case that folder doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it, and create the profiles.ini file, with the following content:
[General] StartWithLastProfile=0 [Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=<name of folder you copied in step 3>
- Fire up Thunderbird and you should see all your folders under Local folders.
- In case you save all your e-mail on the server, then just connecting to the IMAP (Exchange) server should allow you to get all your e-mail. My instructions are more specific to people who might have a PST file locally.
Most other applications are available on Ubuntu, or can be added easily using the Package Manager.
Of course, there are applications that I will miss, but can survive without: Cisco IP Communicator and WebEx. Some of you will most likely miss iTunes, or QT, or maybe even Windows Media Player, but if you look around, I’m sure you can find a replacement.
If you can think of any other applications that you use in Windows, and have been able to get working in Linux, please let me know.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I use Ubuntu in my daily task. It really is a good way to be exposed to tools like Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org and here I’d like to share with you my Ubuntu stuff at tboxmy.blogspot.com
Best wishes
June 20th, 2008 at 2:31 am
I don’t know man… I kinda like Windows. Is Ubuntu really worth the switch?
June 20th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Here’s the thing. It’s free, and for me, does everything that Windows did, at times better. You can install it on a separate partition, and use WINE to actually run Windows programs from the other partition, if you absolutely need those programs. I don’t miss Windows a bit. There are some programs that don’t work on Ubuntu, like WebEx. Other than that, I don’t miss Windows a bit. Again, I did it because I didn’t want to be tied down to Windows and “buying” it.