trouble booting Linux Ubuntu for first time...
 

Downladed Ubuntu last week from a German ftp site

Now I have transferred it to a CD, but cannot get it to boot

What are the error messages?
We can not look inside your head :-)

Have you checked the boot settings in your PC's BIOS? "Removable media boot" will need to be enabled, and the CD/DVD drive will need to be above the hard drive in the boot order.

Also (just a thought), is it definitely a CD rather than a DVD? I've had PCs fail to boot because I was putting a DVD in a CD drive!

Failing that, there may have been a problem with the download, the disk or the burning process. If you have the software available to check, you could verify the .iso file against the md5 sums available from here.

Some info that may help.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/

Did you do an md5checksum? Burn it as an iso image at a low speed?