Still in an early stage of development, but hopefully ready for Feisty Fawn. Yesterday Migration-assistant 0.3.1 was uploaded to main and the accompanying changes were merged into Ubiquity. It can be run using the –migration-assistant option in Ubiquity.

This is a functionality that has been lacking for Linux distros and other operating systems for years. There has even been written books about how to migrate from Windows to Linux. The goal of the migration assitant is simply to allow users to import documents and settings from their previous operating systems (Windows XP and some bits of Linux at the moment) and convert them into their Ubuntu
equivalents during a dual-boot installation. As an example the developer point to the folder “My Music” in Windows, and that it’s content get copied over to the Music folder in Ubuntu, and that the assistant sets the necessary gconf keys so that Rhythmbox starts with all of their existing music already available (provided they’ve installed the necessary gstreamer packages). When it comes to Internet bookmarks, the migration assistant is capable of merging settings from multiple sources. So if you have Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer installed, it will create a single set of bookmarks from all three of them. Great, isn’t it?

Further details can be found in the specification:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/migration-assistance

Kudos to the Ubuntu Dev Team for making a difference!