Free Ubuntu 12.04 CDs for Windows XP Users

[#1]

[quote=omgubuntu]Ahead of the severing of official support for Microsoft Windows XP next year, the German city of Munich have begun offering free Ubuntu 12.04 LTS CDs in select local libraries.
Around 2,000 discs, to be given away between now and April 2014, have been produced.
The initiative is aimed at preventing electronic waste from discarded computers that, though unable to upgrade to a ‘supported’ version of Windows, would continue to function fine with an alternative OS.
And with some 20 million German PC users said to still use Windows XP the waste problem Munich hope to avert with this effort could be huge.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/09/ubuntu-12-04-lts-cds-munich-windows-xp

I have been upgrading friends and neighbours XP machines to Ubuntu for years, and without exception, they have ALL been VERY happy to be able to continue using their old machines, and been amazed at the benefits that Ubuntu has compared to XP, so much so that I get further upgrades to do now from their recommendations to their friends !
Now if only I could persuade 'Sprite' 

[#2]

Rather pointless IMO , considering optical drives are increasingly becoming a rarity and Ubuntu et al are readily available from their websites

[#3]

I'm all for promoting the use of Linux (where appropriate), but if the aim is to reduce waste going into landfill, why create a couple of thousand CDs when the download won't take more than a couple of hours even on the worst broadband connections. And with Linux you ARE going to need a working broadband connection, since installing additional software is going to be done by pulling from the online repositories, as opposed to popping down to the shop for a boxed CD copy.
I'd also question the choice of Ubuntu 12.04 (presumably, the standard Unity version) if this for old computers incapable of running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Xubuntu or Lubuntu would have been a better choice.

[#4]

I did mention this several months ago, when they were first suggesting it. I thought then it was going to be the light version, as most XP computers will struggle with the full unutty version esp if they have 256/512Mb ram.

[#5]

They didn't opt for OpenSUSE then (SUSE is based in Germany).
This could just result in Linux being associated with old and slow computers. I've got an old pentium4 system dating from 2002, it still works, even running Linux it's still pretty slow, I've largely stopped using it, at some point keeping ancient hardware plodding away ends up an inefficient use of electricity. If nothing else, the cpu just isn't fast enough to play 3Mbit 720p h264 video, and it's not as if a similarly old graphics card is going to be able to assist with that.

[#6]

IMO that's because they are catering for MS Windows users and, though others may disagree, Ubuntu/Mint are "not as different" in comparison with openSUSE - so require less initial effort.

[#7]

Not really with Unutty in place (if they get it, they will need a semi decent graphics card) it is more like W8 than xp. If they had gone with Mint then it wouldn't have been such a big difference.

[#8]

I go along with that, my old Dell OptiPlex GX110 is a bit pushed with XP but I will stick with it for now. Both my machines, the other is a Win 7 HP Pavilion, are due to be Mintised when I have time. They both have secondary HDs of 160 Gb and 500 Gb respectively and I have thought to do a dual boot using these rather than fiddle with the partitions in either of the main HDs. Do you recommend this ploy? I do have disks for Mint 14 32 & 64 bit versions.

[#9]

You can do that, install grub to the first hdd and install on the second, or install all to the 2nd and set the bios to boot from the 2nd.

[#10]

That is encouraging, H. McB.
Must give it a go when my other problems are solved! I am not sure if the 1st HD in each machine can accommodate grub which probably needs an ext3 one and the others are all Windows, one certainly has all four primary partitions in use but it is not full.
If I go down the separate HD for Linux path, what is the drill to amend the BIOS to boot from it?

[#11]

Grub installs in to the mbr, (master boot record) which all drives have (except a very few specialist ones before someone corrects me), so no problem what the partitions are formatted in.
In the bios there is usually a boot from device section, then there maybe a bit to select which drive, depends on the age of the pc.

[#12]

Sadly the Dell only has Diskette/CD ROM/HD C as booting up order. although my E drive (second HD) runs, it is not seen by the BIOS. Machine is of 2000 vintage and would not normally have an extra HD. So booting from that may not be on. The C drive must have the mbr so grub will have go in there. I will explore this when I get the itch! Thanks.

[#13]

Not all of grub is in the mbr. If the first part of grub is on the mbr of the first drive, but the rest of grub is in a filesystem the second drive, then you wouldn't be able to boot any OS without the second drive.

[#14]

Years ago when I first decided to try Linux I  installed it on an external HDD in case I mucked up Windows.
I have continued with that and although my main OS is PCLinux,  I also have Mint and MEPIS installed just to try them out.
I always install Grub to the MBR  on the internal (Windows) drive and have never had a problem. The new install invariably recognizes all the OS's I have installed.
Just a word of caution though. When installing Linux to a secondary HDD it will usually offer to install Grub to that drive. You need to make sure you change that to the Mbr on the main drive.
Another factor for me is that PCLinuxOS  still uses legacy Grub rather than Grub 2 which creates it's own problem. But all the other main Linux Os's use Grub 2 and will install perfectly happily together.

[#15]

Quote from: ejs

Not all of grub is in the mbr. If the first part of grub is on the mbr of the first drive, but the rest of grub is in a filesystem the second drive, then you wouldn't be able to boot any OS without the second drive.

The MBR is just the first sector (512 bytes of the drive).
You could [carefully] take a backup of it with the dd command.
I believe Windows can wipe a Linux mbr and replace it with a windows mbr.