Ubuntu migration: the sweet taste of freedom at a price

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 06 November 2007 16:19

Opinion and Analysis

Well the Linux desktop is certainly here and I can prove it because as of today I'm officially an Ubuntu user and even though things aren't perfect, I feel like I've finally escaped from jail. Those of you contemplating the move from Windows, however, had better be prepared to make some compromises and even a few sacrifices.

Before we get into all the good stuff you can do with this little chunk of compact tightly written code that can even be run from a single 700MB CD (compare that with Vista), it's worth considering some of things that might frustrate Windows refugees. I'm assuming nobody reading this gives two hoots about Windows PC games.

As far as I can see at this stage of the Ubuntu trip I'm on, the more sophisticated a user you are, the more difficult the migration is going to be. For the home user who has little or no stake in using Microsoft products, such as the Office suite, and who uses the Outlook Express email client, there will be little or no pain. Simply download the Mozilla Thunderbird email client to Windows, transfer across your Outlook Exoress emails, and then when you install Ubuntu, you can transfer your emails across to Thunderbird running on Linux or the pre-installed Evolution groupware and email package.

If you're a home office or small office user like me, who uses Outlook or a student used to doing projects in Excel and PowerPoint, there will be some issues. As an Outlook user, I can move my emails into Evolution via the Thunderbird route. However, it's frustrating that there is no practical way to get my calendar entries across. I'll have to boot Windows daily to check on appointments or manually go through the next few months and copy them across to Evolution.

I am not in the slightest bit fussed about my existing Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF files. I can access every one of them and read them fine from Ubuntu and OpenOffice without having to boot up Windows. However, for a student who has more complicated dynamic automated PowerPoint presentations or an office worker who runs existing Excel applications with macros, functionality will be lost unless they boot up Windows. They can of course choose to do redo those applications in Ubuntu or run a Windows XP virtual machine on top of Ubuntu for those applications that can't be ported easily.

All these problems become magnified as we move into medium sized and large organizations where legacy Windows applications have become entrenched for a decade or more. Thankfully, however, virtualization does provide the prospect of some salvation. Running Windows XP in a virtual window on top of Ubuntu or another Linux desktop using VMWare or XenSource could be the way to go. Anyone who has already installed Vista, however, can forget about that.

Alright, that's the bad stuff out of the way. There is just so much good, it's hard to know where to begin. However, I shall give it a try.