Migrating from Windows to Linux
Moving Forward
maddog looks at the progress Linux has made in the past 12 years and considers what it would take to move Windows XP users to FOSS.
Recently I noticed that Microsoft had put a stake in the sand and (once again) announced the retirement of Windows XP, this time with a target date of April 8, 2014. Given all the other times Microsoft has announced the retirement of Windows XP, I suppose they wanted to avoid April 1st. But I digress.
In light of this announcement, I wondered how the FOSS community could leverage that large number of Windows XP customers who have not migrated to another Microsoft product, such as Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. Those users had many different Microsoft alternatives from which to choose, but they stayed with Windows XP. Since Windows XP was released in 2001, that means they are using the same Microsoft operating system technology that existed when Linux Pro Magazine was young.