[kwlug-disc] migration xp to linux

[Insurance Squared Inc.]

On the off chance anyone's interested in this, I'm currently moving (as 
we speak) my wife's XP computer over to linux.  it was less of a task 
than I figured - so far anyway.

1) the new machine has an XP license, so I'm fudging a bit.  And the new 
machine isn't 'new', it's a used PC I bought from ebay.
2) I installed mandriva 2010 on the new machine.  Set up virtualbox as 
an app, then installed XP inside virtualbox.  Also set up a shared drive 
between xp and linux.  Then I installed our accounting program on the 
shared drive.  That was the sole remaining windows only app she uses.  
Hoping to eventually move even that over to linux, this way she can run 
both apps simultaneously on the same machine, for testing.
3) set up an ftp server on the new machine and put both machines on the 
network.
4) copied over all her folders that she indicated using ftp.
5) copied over the mozilla profiles folder and the thunderbird mail 
directory, then edited profiles.ini on the new machine to point to these 
folders (so she retains email and web bookmards).
6) My wife does all our document scanning (we're very paper heavy).  We 
have an old scsi interface scanner I bought off of ebay, it's about 10 
years old.  Sane reports the functionality as 'full' - benefits of using 
old hardware, it's well tested.

I did the complete move and training just this morning.  Everything 
worked almost perfectly the first time.  The only tweaks:
- need to install a burner
- need to grab one more document file off the the old computer
- need to find a good front end for sane, for the scanner.  For us, 
'good' means we can throw a 10 page document and it'll scan all 10 pages 
at once, then easily convert to pdf and save.  Xsane makes us click to 
scan each page individually.  Recommendations are welcome.

The biggest benefit behind all this is that I can easily back up her 
machine each night using my normal rsync procedures.

Poke me with a fork, I'm done :).

g.