I have taken on a project to convert a Toshiba laptop from XP to Linux. This is for a low budget music school startup. The laptop and my time are donated. The user will be a computer literate secretary to the school and she is prepared to learn all the new open source programs like Thunderbird, Open Office and Foxit Reader.

My real goal is to develop a simple repeatable procedure to upgrade more XP computers the same way. Then I can provide training, maintenance and technical support for the new group of Linux users in the community.

I hope someone will have some general suggestions and maybe links to good resources on this. My goal for this Toshiba laptop is to make a bootable USB that will load a dual boot system with Linux and XP. I've been playing around with the Ubuntu download from Canonical using a different old XP and am having trouble getting the "Wubi installer" to work. (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide). I'd rather have an iso file that doesn't need the Wubi installer and I'd like to use my windows 8 computer to make a bootable Linux installer Ubuntu USB stick.

Thanks

hmm, maybe I'll quit thinking about trying to convert my XP computers over to linux. though i think Dell made a linux distribution for both of them.

http://askubuntu.com/...-using-the-wubi-installer

Thanks Marshal, thats exactly what I was looking for. I need a linux iso file without the wubi installer. I will try one from this page on my old XP test computer to see if it works. Then I'll do the Toshiba laptop.

Then I want to load dual boot Linux systems on my Dell Vista laptop, my Intel I5-4570 Win 8 computer and an old G4 Ibook too

Here's a project update: The Toshiba Pentium 1.73 GHz, 2*512GB RAM, was up and running with standalone Linux Ubuntu-12.04.4-desktop-i386.iso and delivered 1st thing Monday on Susan's first day at work. We got wifi and Thunderbird up and running in an hour.

Now I have a dual boot system on my Dell Windows Vista laptop and am playing. (Playing Cheap Trick, in fact!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEDGKeapTo

Thanks Marshal

I now know just enough Linux to be really dangerous

wubi is actually not supported anymore, and hasnt been for some time (since 12.10?). wubi is also not a true dual boot, as it is just a virtual machine, meaning the system is a bit slower too.

Also, XP formats the disk in a way that you can not shrink the disk... I actually made a video about how to set up dual booting. I would also suggest Lubuntu (less resource hungry) for older machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLMJ7BcOHq8

Thanks LittleItaly. I had to play around with changing the partition sizes to make a dual boot with Vista because at first it didn't work. But I didn't need the Wubi at all with the download iso list that Marshal provided. The Ubuntu is working very well on the admin Pentium Toshiba. They are looking at going with all Linux with my support.. I hope.

Now I'm fixing another old laptop for them. Its got an unstable Vista operating system and I think Ubunu will fix a few problems, like a sound problem. I could use some more advice here: I have to save 10GB of Windows Mail eml files from this Gateway laptop. I tried all day to convert them all to a Thunderbird profile. Once I save them and make these archived mail messages readable by Thunderbird, I can go ahead and switch this laptop to Ubuntu as well.

Any thoughts or links on Mail to TBird that you know work? Thanks!

try addon https://addons.mozilla.org/.../addon/importexporttools/ ?

here's some instructions: https://support.mozilla.org/.../kb/switching-thunderbird

p.s. you should update 12.04 to 14.04.1

I've had no luck with the importexporttools addon. I spent about 4 hours trying it, installing and uninstalling, etc etc. Its seems to have the import options that I want to use highlighted in a light grey colour and not useable, or disabled. I'll look into the 12.04 to 14.04.1 thing.

does anyone have a method for Windows Mail (Vista) to Thunderbird (any version) that they have used and know works?

What Marshall posted seems correct.

Since you say Vista is unstable, then I would just back up that folder with the .eml files, install ubuntu, and try following the instructions while in Ubuntu.

Update:
Thanks once again Marshal and LittleItaly. I took the weekend off to play Express, haha, but have returned to the tbird/ windows mail problem once again, and, success! I used the ImportExportTools addon from Thunderbird running on Ubuntu v.14.04.01 and imported the 40,000 messages that had been on the gateway computer. I used my Dell laptop running the dual boot Ubuntu to do this.

Now that I've know I've got the mail backed up and am able to restore and read the messages I can proceed with loading Ubuntu on the customer's Gateway laptop and erasing Windows Vista forever.