complicated ubiquity migration + user import

The second form (user setup page) is necessary as you need a default user for the system. This user gets added to the admin group and can sudo.
If you were to type the same name or username as one of the ones you're importing documents and settings from, it would autofill the rest of the form and just reuse those credentials for the default user.

I agree that the interaction between the migration and user setup page is overly complicated and I am open to further suggestions on how to make it more intuitive.

ok that seems to clear some things up in my mind.

I would not let the user se a username or password for imported users.
If you want to import 20 users from an existing system, you won't give each one a new password, will you? Or a different username.

So I suggest: let me import/migrate existing users from other systems - as they are: that means, get rid of the lower part of the migration assistent (full name, name, pw).
At the next page you can select if you want to take one of these as the main/admin user, the others are non-privileged; in case no one of these are right you can add e.g. yourself as new one (with the existing form).
That would be transparent in my opinion.

Thanks for being that open to suggestions and for answering so fastly - I more and more am impressed in the open source way of thinking.
That's great.
I'm sorry I can't program in C or Python, so I cant help directly I guess.

Unfortunately, it's just not possible to know what the passwords are for the accounts you're importing without a lengthy decryption process. Some usernames from other operating systems are also invalid in Ubuntu, such as ones with spaces. In addition to this, the bottom portion of the the UI also allows you to consolidate the number of users on the system by letting you import multiple accounts into a single account. Still, I'd be willing to forfeit that ability and get rid of the bottom portion of the UI entirely if the other issues did not exist.

The next page (user setup) already lets you do what you suggest. That is, you can either select an existing imported user, or create a new one. But as I said in my previous comment, this is not easily discoverable in its current form and either the text should be changed or the two choices (use an existing user or type in a new one) should be more cleanly separated, in my opinion. This is something that can be considered for 8.04.

No worries about coding abilities. You'll find that there are plenty of people involving themselves in the community in a big way by filing or triaging bug reports, writing specifications, or helping other users. I appreciate your, and others, input on the design of migration-assistant.

Thanks.

I noticed this complication also. Is it possible, if only one user gets created, for the user setup page to just auto select that user. Either way, there really needs to be some text describing that you can select already created users, and perhaps a separate list for doing so?

I think the best way of handling this is going to be a much clearer separation between reusing a migration-assistant created account or making a new user for the default. My current idea for the UI would be:

You need to select an account to be the default user on the system. This account will have full administrator rights. As you have already created some accounts on the migration page, you can select one from the list below to use.
[ m-a usernames drop down | \ / | ]
Alternatively, you can fill out the form below to create a new account as the default user.
[ regular user setup form ]

The wording needs a bit of work, but I hope this does a better job of explaining what I mean by a clearer separation. The default option in the m-a username drop down would be "Select a user" or something similar. I haven't run this idea by any usability experts yet, however.

Why not simply set up users before starting the migration assistant (switch step 5 and 6)?

At the moment, I find it really unusual that I have to set up a user to import data into, before I have set up the users of the machine. It would make a lot more sense to me if, at step 5, I set up my user(s). Then, at step 6, when I am importing data into a user account, I could simply select it from a list. That would have the added benefit that, if only one user had been created, the migration assistant wouldn't need to ask any questions about which user to use (it would use the only one that was created).

Triaged to Confirmed since it has already been assigned to Wishlist. Since I don't use Windows, I can't comment on migration assistant functionality.

Triaged to Confirmed as stated previously.

I see this as fixed in Hardy Beta - the steps were reversed and all is well from my point of view.

yes, agreed.

Please, don't close Baltix distro bugs, assigned to Baltix by main Baltix developer :)