MigrateAndBackup

Summary

What this would be is a tool that can backup data to somthing like usb key, ssh, ftp or something like that and on the current environment tranlate documents and email formats in to the formats used on the computer.

Rationale

People are scared of losing something when the migrate to linux and for the most part it's true because the don't know how to migrate contacts, email, bookmarks, background picture and so on, but remarkably some of them do migrate. But that's only because they are used to losing there data, for example when updating, viruses and harddrive crases. This is not the image that we want to give of linux, that you have to start out with a clean slate. People are also going to go back and forth between windows and linux and they want there data to move with them. And also an extra benfit is that they get to move selected stuff to work and school, like when you want a webpage you bookmarked or don't want to download 30 M of email everywere ( I know there is imap but most people don't know the diffrence).

Use cases

This would be like if you insert the instalation cd on windows it would pop up a program that would backup your data, according to your wishes it would know what email archives are and browser history and doc files and so on. Then when you install linux it would take these documents and translate them in to the formats used there, and then back them up. This would then allow users to go back and forth between windows and linux without hassle, and would also help when you go to diffrent computers like in your university.

Scope

Design

Implementation

There is a project that came out of Google Summer of Code that deals with backup. pyBackPack And there are alot of diffrent project dealing with migration. Like the Firefox code and OpenOffice.org and OpenMoveOver.

I was thinking of something like.

Mobile Office

|Backup| |Restore|

Select |Only Email|

####

< &$ > Email

#### Email prefererences and data

####

< #" > Bookmarks (Greyed)

#### All bookmarks...

It would be good to make it possible to use an usb key for storing the program, and when you insert the key into the computer you get this window. And also possible to download over the internet when using ssh, ftp, WebDAV and so on.

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion


CategorySpec

MigrateAndBackup (last edited 2008-08-06 16:28:01 by localhost)