Migrate an old Hacktop from Windows XP to Ubuntu

Next month on April 8, 2014 extended support for Windows XP will end. Since non of its successors, except Windows 7, became really popular with users Windows XP still has the 2nd highest operating system market share on desktops, see the distribution for February 2014 in the chart below.

With government agencies spying on everyone and other malicious hackers trying to break into systems, using a piece of software, that is not updated anymore, sounds like a very bad idea.

Linux to the rescue. These videos from the Computerphile channel show how to migrate an 8yr old Hacktop from Windows XP to Ubuntu 2012 LTS. Choosing the 2012 LTS release rather than a newer version of Ubuntu is a reasonable choice since it will be supported until 2017 and should run fairly well on older hardware.

In the above video Joe creates a bootable USB drive using UNetbootin on Windows, the extra bits videos below contain more information on the migration process.

Hacktop Real-Time Boot Comparison

Both Ubuntu and Win XP require patience when booted from the 8 year old hard disk. Ubuntu takes 1 min 50 sec to boot and start FireFox while Win XP takes 2 min 38 sec to boot only.

Making a Bootable USB in Linux

This video shows how to create the bootable USB stick in Ubuntu using information from gparted and the dd command.

Installing Ubuntu Permanently

Finally, this video shows how to completely wipe off your Windows installation and install Ubuntu permanently on your machine.

Of course there are other Linux distributions you could use instead, see the article on choosing and building the right Linux distro for more information and pointers.