You will probably want to move your files into your Home folder. It is considered good practice to store all of your personal files (such as documents, pictures, music and the like) in your Home folder. Then, they are all in one easily-accessed location.
To access your Home folder, press → . You can create new folders inside your Home folder by pressing → . You may find it useful to create folders for different types of files, such as music and photos. This will help to keep things organized and you will be able to find your files more quickly and easily if they are categorized in this manner.
How you copy your files from Windows into your Home folder will depend on how you decided to store your files from Windows. See the section called “Transferring your data safely” for more information on this. However you decided to store your files, the procedure for transferring them across is very simple. For a CD or DVD for example, you would use the following procedure:
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Insert the disc into the disc drive of your computer. After a short while, a disc icon should appear on your
desktop. -
Double-click the icon to view the contents of the disc.
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Ensure that your Home folder is open in another window. You can open your Home folder by clicking → .
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In the window corresponding to the disc you inserted, press → . This will select all of the contents of the disc.
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Press → to make a copy of all of the selected files.
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In the window corresponding to your Home folder, press → to copy all of the files to your Home folder. If you have many files, this may take a long time.
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Once the copying process has finished, your files will be available to use as normal.
Ubuntu includes the F-Spot Photo Manager, which you can use to organize all of your photos.
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Open your Home folder and create a new folder called Photos. You can do this by pressing → .
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Copy any photos you have into the folder you just created.
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Press → → to start F-Spot.
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The Import screen should be shown. If it is not, press → to show it.
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To prevent two copies of your photos from being stored, un-check the Copy file to the Photos folder.
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From Import source select the option Select Folder. Select the
Photosfolder in your Home folder by clicking it once. -
Press to start the import process. Depending on how many photos you have, this may take a while.
Another useful application installed by default in Ubuntu is the Rhythmbox Music Player. This allows you to organize and play all of your music.
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Open your Home folder and create a new folder called Music. You can do this by pressing → .
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Copy any music files you have into the folder you just created.
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Press → → to start Rhythmbox.
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Press → to begin importing your music. The Import Folder into Library screen will appear.
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Click the
Musicfolder in your Home folder in order to select it, and then press to import all playable music in that folder into Rhythmbox. -
The import process may take a while depending on how many music files you have. Once finished, you can organize and play your music using Rhythmbox.
Rhythmbox will alert you if it encounters a file it cannot play. In this case, it is likely that the file cannot be played because support for the audio format it uses is not currently installed. See the section called “Converting unsupported audio formats” for more information on this.
