import hotmail folders to Gmail

Binary package hint: thunderbird

I have been advised to set the filter to enable and export the folders from hotmail to gmail, but unable to to so
So what is the procedure to import these hotmail folder so as I can use gmail as my main email client??
this is in Kubuntu 8.0.4

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Apr 22 08:17:50 2009
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: mozilla-thunderbird None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-thunderbird.list]
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-23-generic i686

Usually, you connect to Hotmail via IMAP then copy the folders and mails to your gmail account also connected via IMAP. This may take a while if you have a lot of email.