For better or worse, the Linux Migration Project is not going to address the complete beginner or newbie administrator. While we're not assuming the reader knows a great deal about Linux or UNIX, we will assume that that reader is already at least a reasonable Windows administrator who is used to basic administration tasks. The name Linux Migration Project was chosen to emphasize the notion of a migration -- not up from a beginner level, but sideways from an existing operating system (in this case, Windows) to Linux.

Quite simply, we're writing for the already-savvy technical audience, and for managers who need to be persuaded that moving to a Linux environment is not that big a deal if someone just shows them how.

Important

While we're not going to assume that you know a lot about Linux, we will assume that you will at least have familiarized yourself with the most basic commands and features of Linux before you start on your migration project. For example, if you're not aware that Linux is a case-sensitive operating system, or that you can list the files in a directory with the ls command, then you're not ready for a migration.