Good morning,
I was looking into switching my home workstation to a linux machine, but I wondered about migrating data.
Would the best bet be throwing documents and files on an external and manually pulling them over?
But wont file formats also constrict what can be pulled over?
This might be a very novice question, but I figured I would give it a shot asking.
22 Spice ups
shnladd
(Shnladd)
2
File formats won’t have much impact - the only time it’s a problem is if there’s no program to read them, in which case you wouldn’t be able to open them until you install something that can do it. For that you can use WINE or a VM (VirtualBox is free and available on Linux). The OS and/or filesystem won’t care, though.
If you have a NAS, you can redirect your home folder to it prior to swapping OSes on your client machine, then pull everything back down or symlink it. Failing that, you can boot to a liveCD/liveUSB and archive your entire C:\Users(user) directory using tar or gzip or p7zip. From there you can copy the archive to an external disk, NAS, another PC, or wherever you want.
EDIT: I mean to say that you can use WINE or VirtualBox --if there exists no Linux-native software to read the files.-- Definitely check to see if there’s something you can install via apt-get, RPM, or source that doesn’t requite compatibility layers or emulation first.
4 Spice ups
Great ideas, I never thought about the NAS redirect. Thank you for your input.
Bud-G
(Bud G.)
4
Or you can just load Virtualbox or VMware player and load a virtual instance. Makes it easier if you want to try different distros.
2 Spice ups
Ya I will probably end up doing that until I find what I want. Going to start with mint, I’ve tried fedora in the past in a school course and it was nice but I want to see what else is out there.
seanwolsey
(Sean Wolsey)
6
An external drive of any kind is a great idea, and not just for migrating but as a backup as well. So many people, even IT folks, forget about home backups
I’d recommend trying Ubuntu, too. Mint is very like Windows, which can be nice, but it can get confusing, too. What I’m really advocating here is trying lots of different distributions and settle on the one that is right for you. I tried at least a dozen before I decided which one I liked best.
File formats affect applications, not operating systems. So you need to determine if you have the apps to do what you need on Linux.
2 Spice ups
Bud-G
(Bud G.)
8
External or even something like Google drive, etc. et. al… infinity…
I’m very much of the opposite camp. Ubuntu is hard to use and super confusing. Mint is like Windows, but easier. Definitely try different things and see what you like, but I generally recommend Ubuntu for experts only. If you don’t know Linux, Ubuntu is going to be super confusing and might drive you away from an otherwise wonderful experience.
4 Spice ups
Bud-G
(Bud G.)
10
For me, Ubuntu isn’t that bad, because it’s one of the more well-known flavors out there. If you’re looking to eventually make it a profession, then start with something like Fedora. Actually, start with Fedora desktop for the GUI and install CentOS in a VM and do some projects.
Then you’ll learn to love Linux.
1 Spice up
shnladd
(Shnladd)
11
That’s interesting - I’ve always found Ubuntu to be pretty intuitive. Then again, I wasn’t coming at it from a zero-knowledge perspective, though - I cut my teeth on Slackware and Red Hat (prior to the RHEL/Fedora split) so I already had some idea of how *nix worked and could adapt to it. What is it you find off-putting about Ubuntu if you don’t mind my asking?
seanwolsey
(Sean Wolsey)
12
I like Ubuntu because it is intuitive (at least to me) and because of the community. They’re respectful and you can find out anything you need to about the OS. I’ve been to several other distro’s communities and been flat out insulted by the “you’re so stupid for not knowing that” attitude, not to mention that they would never actually give me the help I needed. We all have to start at the beginning sometime.
2 Spice ups
shnladd
(Shnladd)
13

Sean Wolsey:
I like Ubuntu because it is intuitive (at least to me) and because of the community. They’re respectful and you can find out anything you need to about the OS. I’ve been to several other distro’s communities and been flat out insulted by the “you’re so stupid for not knowing that” attitude, not to mention that they would never actually give me the help I needed. We all have to start at the beginning sometime.
I have found this to be true as well, though recently it’s taken longer to get any response at all on UbuntuForums. Still, it’s nice to ask an honest question and not get “STFU, noob, google it up” as an answer. I think we’re in a better place overall than 10-15 years ago, but there’s still an elitism problem in the FOSS community. The fact that someone worked hard to reach their level of mastery should mean that they want to help lift others up, not stand by looking smug while others struggle through the same now-familiar territory.
I’ve found the FreeBSD community to be as good as, if not even better than, the Ubuntu community to my slight surprise. I feared that the niche status of FreeBSD would make it even more insular and the users more aloof, but they were most welcoming when I had some config questions for a new setup.
Like said before, file formats don’t matter. Wine is getting much better. Even a simple minimal config can do fun things like open remote chat session clients and run basic windows programs. Makes it much easier to go full nix. I’ve been using Debian for years. Made Ubuntu really easy to jump into, and yes the community is a great resource. Don’t just pick one distro though. Living entirely in the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint world makes little things terribly annoying if you need to use CentOS, Suse, etc… At the very least try to keep up with what makes the other distros different, that way you spend less time butting your head against a wall when you need to write a script that runs on startup…
1 Spice up
Thanks everyone for your responses.
I have decided to run some test VM’s on my windows machine before going all out on an install.
As far as the distros go, if two distros I was to try are say debian based, that would mean they are running on the same “core” correct? So it wouldn’t be a huge transition?
1 Spice up
shnladd
(Shnladd)
16
Thanks everyone for your responses.
I have decided to run some test VM’s on my windows machine before going all out on an install.
As far as the distros go, if two distros I was to try are say debian based, that would mean they are running on the same “core” correct? So it wouldn’t be a huge transition?
Basically, yes. All Linux distros are running the same “core” in that they’re all running the Linux kernel. Debian has certain preconfigured packages and features (most significantly aptitude/apt-get repository-based software installation) that are common to Debian-derived distributions, so you can think of it almost in a superclass/subclass type of context if you’re familiar with principles of OOP.
I am still of the opinion that any UI that you use for a while should become fairly intuitive. I’ve used a lot of them. Windows from 3.0 onwards, Mac since the Mac + and a number of flavours of Linux. (Not even mentioning the phone OS’s) Ultimately, they all do the same things. They create and manage files, create and manage networks and network users, and manage the peripherals used for communication both with the computer and the greater networks around it. Using and getting used to a number of them can be confusing at first, but it pays off in the long run.
Getting back to the original question, file types are application rather than OS specific. Most flavours of Linux will read your windows files without any trouble at all if you have an app that uses the file type. I do a lot of file transfer between my Linux and Windows boxes. I find it seamless. Thanks to modern file systems!
There is free open source software for anything that Windows has paid. Think of it like android versus apple. Most apps that Apple makes you pay for, Playstore has a few free alternatives.
For your documents, I recommend libre office. It’s basically a free microsoft office. You can also give Libre office a test drive on Windows before Migrating.
Download free office suite for Windows, macOS and Linux. Microsoft compatible, based on OpenOffice, and updated regularly.
aboushard
(PenguinWrangler)
19
Almost everything you need from Microsoft can be cloud based, Office 365 etc. So on the application front it is even easier to move to Linux these days. I use Google apps at home. I don’t need to do anything that complex at home. I have been using ChromeOS with my Chromebook and Chromebox for a couple of years now. They are great. Of course all I do at home is web based or I am using SSH to get into a server. I don’t game or anything else. I keep thinking that I need to get a laptop or desktop with more power, but why? How much RAM and processor do you need for a SSH session?
Good morning,
I was looking into switching my home workstation to a linux machine, but I wondered about migrating data.
Would the best bet be throwing documents and files on an external and manually pulling them over?
But wont file formats also constrict what can be pulled over?
This might be a very novice question, but I figured I would give it a shot asking.
Hi Ryan
There are a lot of great suggestions here about how move your files to Linux. One of the suggestions that I loved was to try different distributions before deciding on one that works for you. Don’t forget that you should choose something you actually like as well. I’ve recently found that while Ubuntu and Mint both do most everything I need, I just “like” Mint better. I’ve used several distributions though, and evaluated several more before settling on the two that I use the most (Mint and Kali).
Please truly put everything into it though. What I mean is that I realize you’re evaluating the Linux distros, but try to at least do a data migration to each of them to find out how seamless the distro makes it for you, and how much you will either like or dislike that particular distribution. In order to properly evaluate, you want to immerse yourself in the environment completely. Anything that you would normally do in Windows should be done on the Linux system. In this regard, I would recommend that you run live systems of the Linux distro instead of virtual instances. This way, you won’t be tempted to “go back to Windows” to do something rather than learning how to do it in Linux.
Yes, it will be tough, and yes, it will be frustrating. But we’re here to help! Along with the millions of other Linux people out there.
Good luck! I hope you enjoy your Linux evaluations! I know I did!