Ubuntu Demotes Its Migration Assistant

Posted by Michael Larabel on May 30, 2012

Ubuntu developers have decided to remove the migration-assistant package from the stock Ubuntu installer. This software package was supposed to make it easy for transferring files and settings to Ubuntu Linux from Windows.

The Ubuntu Migration Assistant isn't being removed from the stock Ubuntu because the Linux distribution has succeeded in overtaking Microsoft's Windows market-share, but rather it's removing the package from main because developers have conceded that the support has basically fallen apart. Canonical doesn't have the resources to improve the support and right now there's a load of bugs against it. Bug reports show that migration-assistant outright is failing in many areas or to not transfer anything at all from Windows 7.

The Ubuntu Migration Assistant will also be stripped out of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with the first point release.

This Windows migration utility will be re-added to Ubuntu Linux should someone step up and fix it. The migration-assistant work was talked about on the development mailing list.

In other Ubuntu 12.10 news, there's some ARM kernel improvements (the email). Namely for Texas Instruments OMAP4 hardware there's now HDMI and jack audio support while features like video and audio offloading to the GPU/DSP will come when they pull in the Linux 3.5 kernel with CMA and DMA-BUF support.

Developers have also moved forward with changing the Ubuntu 12.10 kernel flavors (the mailing list message).

Other upcoming work was talked about during the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit.

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