How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: the cheapest way to upgrade from XP

Upgrading to a new operating system is an upheaval, and if it’s a new version of Windows you’re moving to, it’s an expense as well. So it’s understandable that some individuals and businesses haven’t yet migrated their old computers away from Windows XP, even though security patches and support have finally been cut off for good.

There’s no need to stick with a dangerously vulnerable operating system. Upgrading may be much easier than you think – and if you switch to a Linux distribution, rather than hopping up to Windows 8, it won’t cost you a penny, since the OS and major applications are free.

On these pages, we’ll illustrate how easy it is to move an old XP PC over to the latest version of the user-friendly Ubuntu Linux OS – and suggest which programs to use in Linux for your everyday tasks.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Planning for your upgrade

Before you start making plans to move to Ubuntu, the first thing to do is check that the newer OS will actually meet your needs. Below, you’ll find our guide to Ubuntu’s various applications: most everyday computing tasks are well covered, but if you need to work with a particular file, you may find that Windows is your only option.

Assuming Ubuntu is suitable for you, the simplest way to approach the upgrade is to set up a dual-boot system, leaving XP intact. We don’t recommend that you make a habit of booting up your old Windows XP installation, since this will expose you to security risks. But you’ll be able to directly access all your Windows folders within Ubuntu, so doing it this way means you won’t have to worry about losing any personal data in the move. You’ll also have an emergency fallback if a task comes up that can’t be done in Ubuntu (or on another PC).

Since XP and Ubuntu will both have to squeeze onto your hard disk, we recommend having a bit of a clear-out to make space for the new OS. Use the Windows Disk Cleanup tool to remove unneeded temporary files and uninstall any unwanted large applications. This is also a good time to get rid of any large personal files you don’t need: use a tool such as WinDirStat to identify what’s eating up the most space on your disk. Don’t forget to empty the Recycle Bin when you’re finished.

If you can’t free up more than 10GB, consider wiping your Windows installation to give Ubuntu space. This is easy to do during the installation process, but if you plan to take this route, back up your files to an external disk first – and be very careful not to miss any.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Choosing and downloading a version of Ubuntu

Ubuntu comes in a variety of versions, but the latest desktop release can always be downloaded from the main Ubuntu site. The newest version – 14.04 LTS, nicknamed the “Trusty Tahr” – is a “long-term support” release that’s guaranteed to remain stable, with continued security and support updates, until April 2019.

The default downloads are 64-bit, but unless you have more than 4GB of RAM, we recommend you select the 32-bit version. This limits you to around 3GB of usable memory, but it supports a wider range of software and drivers, so you can expect a smoother ride. If your PC’s really old, the CPU may not support 64-bit computing anyway.

Click through and you’ll be invited to donate to Ubuntu before downloading the OS: if you’d prefer to try it out without paying, click “Not now, take me to the download”. A large ISO file will now start to download; it’s around 1GB in size, so depending on the speed of your internet connection, it could take minutes or even hours to arrive.

Once the ISO has downloaded, the simplest thing to do is burn it to a DVD (it’s too big to fit on a regular CD). If you don’t have a DVD drive (or a spare disc), use a tool such as the free LinuxLive USB Creator to “burn” it to a USB flash drive. Once this is done, all you need to do is shut down Windows and boot your PC from your freshly created DVD or USB drive. This may entail pressing a key while the computer starts up in order to access the boot menu – or even going into the BIOS and changing the order of boot devices to give the USB or optical drive a higher priority than your main hard disk.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Test drive or full installation?

If you aren’t certain whether Ubuntu is right for you, you can easily try it out without making any changes to your system: simply boot up the installation DVD and select the “Try Ubuntu” option (rather than “Install Ubuntu”). This will boot up a “live” Ubuntu environment, running entirely from the optical disc (and from memory), so you can get a feel for the OS and applications before making a commitment.

Because of its reliance on the optical drive, the “Try Ubuntu” environment is much less responsive than a real installation, so don’t be disheartened if it’s annoyingly slow. For obvious reasons it’s also not possible to install additional applications, although you can access and update files on your Windows hard disk. If you’re sold on Ubuntu right away, you can install the OS from within the live environment, simply click on the “Install Ubuntu” icon at the top of the Launcher.

Needless to say, if you boot from the installation media and select “Install Ubuntu”, the operating system will be installed on your hard disk. You’ll be asked whether you want to “download updates while installing” – this will take longer, but it means that when you’re finished any recently updated OS components and drivers will be ready and working.

It’s also a good idea to tick “Install this third party software”, which refers to the Fluendo MP3 plugin. Without it, you won’t be able to listen to MP3s, which probably isn’t what you want. It’s only excluded by default since the encoder isn’t fully free and open-source.

You’ll next be asked how you want to set up Ubuntu. As discussed above, we suggest you choose “Install Ubuntu alongside Windows”; if you choose “Replace Windows with Ubuntu”, be certain you’ve backed up all your data before proceeding. To set up the dual-boot system, the Ubuntu installer divides your hard disk into two partitions: drag the divider to choose how much space you want to keep for Windows and how much to allocate to Ubuntu. You may as well shrink XP down almost as far as it will go: just leave a gigabyte or two of headroom in case you ever need to boot back into Windows for some reason, as it won’t work properly if there’s no spare disk space.

The resize operation may take minutes or hours, depending on how full and fragmented your hard disk is. You’ll then be prompted for administrative details, including which time zone you’re in, which sort of keyboard you’re using, what username you want and so on. If it’s a home PC that you don’t share with others, it’s probably safe to activate “Log in automatically”, so you don’t need to enter a password every time your Ubuntu system starts up, and there’s no need to “Encrypt my home folder”.

The installer will now grind away for a while, after which you’ll be prompted to restart the computer, remove the installation disc and wait for your new Ubuntu PC to boot up.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Finding your way

Ubuntu is a simple and intuitive operating system, but it differs in a few key ways from the Windows XP style of doing things. The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s no Start menu, but you can launch applications by clicking the icons on the Launcher at the left of the screen. You can also search for software and files by name by opening the “Dash”; to do so, click the swirly Ubuntu logo at the top of the Launcher, or tap the Windows key and start typing. The spiky icon at the top right of the menu bar is where you’ll find system settings and shutdown options.

Your personal folders in Ubuntu all live in a location called “Home” – you can browse it by opening the Files view (the second Launcher icon from the top). Here, you’ll find folders for Music, Documents and so on, as well as a Desktop folder for easy access to files on your desktop. There’s also a Public folder, where you can keep things you want to share with others: if you create multiple user accounts (say, for other family members), each will have their own Home directory, but only the contents of the Public folder will be accessible to other users.

Ubuntu comes with a decent range of preinstalled software – more so than Windows – and adding more is easy. The Ubuntu Software Centre is effectively an “app store” for your desktop, letting you find and install new programs in a few clicks (its icon looks like a shopping bag with an “A” on the front). And because this is Linux, a huge proportion of the content on offer is free. Below you’ll find our guide to some of the major Linux applications for the jobs you’re used to doing on Windows.

With this information under your belt, you should be ready to start exploring – and if you have more questions, drop by the official help site for a more detailed guide. Ubuntu is a powerful modern operating system, so you may find you quickly come to prefer it to XP.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Web browsing

There’s no Internet Explorer on Linux – some would say that’s a good thing – but Firefox comes preinstalled in Ubuntu. It works just like the Windows version and can use all the same add-ons, so you’ll feel right at home.

Users of other browsers aren’t left out, either. Opera isn’t hosted in the Ubuntu Software Centre, but you can install it from the Opera website: your operating system should be automatically detected, so all you have to do is click the big Download button to get the installer. If you’re using Ubuntu’s standard installation of Firefox, the default option will be to open the downloaded file with /usr/bin/software-center; accept this and click Install inside the Software Centre app to set it up.

If you prefer Chrome, you can install its open-source brother Chromium directly from the Software Centre. This browser looks and works just like regular Chrome, and if you sign in, it will even sync your bookmarks, history and settings from Chrome. However, paid-for features such as Flash and H.264 video support aren’t included in Chromium, so you may prefer to use the full Chrome browser. To install it, visit Google’s Chrome site, click to download and select “32-bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)” from the options offered.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Email

Ubuntu comes with Mozilla Thunderbird, so if you’ve used this on Windows, you’ll be right at home. It will work with any webmail and ISP email service that uses the standard POP or IMAP protocols. If you want a client with an integrated calendar such as Microsoft Outlook, you can download the more advanced Evolution mail and calendar application from the Software Centre.

Outlook itself doesn’t run on Linux; if you want to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server you can ask your provider to enable webmail access.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Chat and VoIP

Skype is owned by Microsoft, so you might expect it to be Windows-only. In fact, there’s a perfectly good native Ubuntu client that you can download from the main Skype website.

If you want to keep up with contacts on other chat services, the preinstalled Empathy instant-messaging tool should do the job. It supports a variety of systems including AIM, Google Talk, Facebook and Yahoo – and it integrates with Ubuntu via the envelope icon on the taskbar. You can stay signed on to several services at once, and receive chat notifications all in one place.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Cloud storage

Dropbox offers a native client for Ubuntu, which you can set up directly from the Software Centre. If you prefer to use Microsoft’s OneDrive (formerly called SkyDrive), you’ll need a workaround: the free Storage Made Easy service provides a native Ubuntu client and handles SkyDrive syncing itself. Apple iCloud, Box, Google Drive and other services are supported too. Until recently, Ubuntu also offered its own Ubuntu One service, but Ubuntu’s publisher Canonical has now discontinued the service, acknowledging that going up against the likes of Dropbox isn’t a competitive strategy.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Office applications

Ubuntu comes with the well-featured LibreOffice suite preinstalled, which can open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. You can also create new documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and save them in Office-compatible file formats. Some people actually prefer LibreOffice to Microsoft Office, thanks to its more traditional – that is, not ribbon-based – interface.

Office documents may not always look exactly right in LibreOffice, however. They’ll be readable, but not every advanced feature is fully supported: the Writer word processor is less flexible than Word when it comes to tables, page borders and watermarks, for example. Other features simply aren’t available: Calc (the equivalent to Excel) lacks Flash fill, sparklines and other handy data-analysis features. The LibreOffice website hosts a useful online feature comparison of the two suites.

A final point to note is that there’s no LibreOffice equivalent to Microsoft Publisher. The Ubuntu Software Centre offers the free Scribus DTP package as an alternative, but its ability to work with other file formats is still a work in progress; if you have an archive of PUB files, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to open and edit them within Ubuntu.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Web editing

Predictably, big-name packages such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Muse aren’t offered on Linux, so you can’t easily bring big projects across. For simple tasks, the Software Centre offers a popular HTML editor called Bluefish. For a more visual approach, you can edit HTML directly in LibreOffice Writer. Other options include SeaMonkey Composer and KompoZer; both of these need to be manually compiled and installed, however, so beginners may prefer to steer clear.

Music

Ubuntu’s built-in Rhythmbox music player is a simple way to manage your music library and podcasts. It supports MP3, OGG, FLAC and M4A audio files, plays and rips CDs, and integrates with dozens of internet radio services –including Last.fm and Libre.fm – to help you discover new music. Sadly, there’s no simple way to move playlists and ratings across from iTunes or Windows Media Player: search online and you’ll find various scripts that promise to help, but if they go wrong you’re on your own.

Since Apple doesn’t make an Ubuntu version of iTunes, there’s also no way to sync an iPod or iPhone from the desktop, or to buy new content from the iTunes Store – although you can manage and buy content directly on your iOS device. If you’re using a non-iOS player such as an Android phone, you can buy music from many alternative services, such as the Amazon MP3 Store. Another option for library management and streaming is Google Play Music Manager, which offers a native Ubuntu client.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Video

Ubuntu’s Videos application is based on the free Totem player; most popular video formats are supported natively, and it’s set up as the default handler for them, so you can simply double-click on a video file to play.

If you need something more versatile, head to the Software Centre and download VLC Media Player, which supports more or less every type of media file you can imagine. It can also play DVDs, but you may need to install the “restricted” (that is, closed-source) Ubuntu extras to make this work.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Photo editing

If your interest in photography extends chiefly to organising and tidying up your snapshots before uploading them to Facebook, Ubuntu has you covered. The preinstalled Shotwell photo manager can import and sort images from any camera or phone, using tags and ratings to divide up your library. You can apply common adjustments such as tweaking the exposure and colour tint, crop out unwanted details and fix red-eye.

More advanced edits can be carried out in GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program), which you’ll find in the Ubuntu Software Centre. It’s capable of matching sophisticated Photoshop effects such as Content-Aware Fill and Move, and it’s even possible to process raw images from a DSLR – the UFRaw module works as both a standalone application and a GIMP plugin for importing raw files. For keen snappers, however, switching to Linux may feel like a step backwards: the GIMP is easier to use than it once was, thanks to a recent interface overhaul, but in our view it still isn’t as accessible as, say, Photoshop Elements. UFRaw, meanwhile, does a great job of processing raw images, but lacks the detailed touch-up tools of Adobe’s Lightroom and Camera Raw software.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Video editing

OpenShot is a free non-linear video editor that you’ll find in the Software Centre. It isn’t as advanced as commercial Windows packages, however – think Windows Movie Maker rather than Sony Vegas. And note that OpenShot can’t import video projects from other applications – only its own OSP file format is supported. If you need more power, try the free edition of Lightworks. This is a much more advanced video editor, but a licence to unlock its full feature set costs £5 per month, or £180 outright.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Music creation

The most developed audio workstation for Ubuntu is Ardour, which offers non-destructive editing across an unlimited number of audio and MIDI tracks. It isn’t free, but it can cost as little as $1 for a one-off purchase with no ongoing updates: for more details, check out the licensing terms. Another option is Tracktion, currently available as a free (64-bit-
only) beta. However, one important caveat for music-makers is that Linux supports a much more limited selection of plugins and virtual instruments than Windows.

How to upgrade from Windows XP to Ubuntu: Games

It’s unlikely that your old Windows games will be available for Ubuntu, but there’s a decent range of open-source diversions in the Software Centre. More serious gamers can also download the Steam platform, which serves as a gateway to a host of modern commercial games. These may not run smoothly on older hardware, and right now the selection is much smaller than it is on Windows and OS X. However, the Linux-based SteamOS gaming system is due for release this year, so we can expect to see more high-profile Ubuntu-compatible games in the future.