I am a mature lady,I have to say that to somehow explain why I am so lost. First of all I have'nt any idea of an ISO. I put in DVD in DVD reader, and tried to follow the instructions from the magazine which in itself is over my head at the moment.

I would be very grateful for any help. I'm doing this because my windows XP is fading and I can only with difficulty get access to my emails.

Many thanks

Sapphirerose

Let's do this step by step.
1. What variety of Linux would you like to install? In Linux-talk this is called "a distro". Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Fedora and so on are examples of distros. You can download any of them free of charge from the distro's own website. You can get an exhaustive list of the distros at this site as well as a link the to website of that particular distro that interests you. If it is really Ubuntu that is the distro that you want then start here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

2. When you have found a distro that you'd like to try then you can download the iso file. The iso is just an image (like a digital photograph) of a CD or DVD disk that you would insert into your computer to install your copy of the distro of choice.
I'd say that once you have done the two steps discussed above, then report back. If there are problems someone will help you solve them. If all is well then we can go on to the next steps.
jdk

Hi,

Welcome to LQ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sapphirerose I am a mature lady,I have to say that to somehow explain why I am so lost. First of all I have'nt any idea of an ISO. I put in DVD in DVD reader, and tried to follow the instructions from the magazine which in itself is over my head at the moment. I would be very grateful for any help. I'm doing this because my windows XP is fading and I can only with difficulty get access to my emails. Many thanks Sapphirerose

Look at: Newbie alert: 50 Open Source Replacements for Windows XP

Once you have selected and downloaded the ISO image you can use one of the 'MD5SUM' checkers below to verify a valid download. Then use 'Imgburn' at a low burn rate (setting of 4) to insure a valid burn of the ISO image on your hardware.

Quote:

M$Windows: Windows Burn tutorial <- 'Nero' Live Video for the newbies who burn the iso instead of the image of the iso. Imgburn <- 'ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!' + Freeware -- MD5SUM: M$Windows iso md5sum checking <- LQ Post on how too md5sum.exe <- M$Win Application to perform md5sum checking. winMd5Sum Portable <- FREE + Good for all M$ Windows

I do suggest that you look at these to get some background information:

Quote:

(Linux is Not Windows) <- 'Refer to the GNU/Linux OS and various Free & Open-Source Software (FOSS) projects under the catch-all name of "Linux". It scans better.' + Great Article Comparison of Windows and Linux <- 'Comparisons between the Microsoft Windows and Linux computer operating systems are a long-running discussion topic within the personal computer industry.' + Great Wiki Windows Partitions <- "How can I allow normal users to access my Windows partition?" + SlackWiki

Quote:

Just a few links to aid you to gaining some understanding; 1 Linux Documentation Project 2 Rute Tutorial & Exposition 3 Linux Command Guide 4 Bash Beginners Guide 5 Bash Reference Manual 6 Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide 7 Linux Newbie Admin Guide 8 LinuxSelfHelp 9 Utimate Linux Newbie Guide The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Have fun!
Hope this helps.

There is an in-expensive alternative. After my stroke I had some cognitive difficulties, which fortunately cleared up in a couple of years. I had some difficulties burning image disks.

So I went to the web (since Computer Shopper was out of business) and started buying discs created by a solid company, with an excellent track record of quality.

Oh did I mention that they were really cost effective.

I have had great success with osdisc.com

There are several others around.

Oh,by the way, it is entirely possible that your install process might go with some difficulties.
If so come back to this forum and discuss the problems with us.

That's a lot to take in.
If you put your dvd in the dvd slot when the machine is runing, shutdown and restart, does the machine boot to the dvd?
If so the bios is set to boot from dvd first.
Be careful, you do not want to install at this point so look for an option to run as a live system and go with that. If this works, try Linux and see if you like it. It will be slow because you are running, at least partly from the dvd.
If it boots back to windoze you probably need to reset the boot priorities in the bios.
Alternatively you could buy a machine with linux pre-installed, depending on where you live, it is not so easy inthe uk.

Fred.

1 members found this post helpful.

A common mistake (I know--I've made it) is not burning the *.iso to a disk using the "burn image" tool in your CD/DVD burner. If you just copy as if were any other file, all you will have is a copy of the file. The "burn image" tool recreates the structure and contents of the actual install disk.

Where the "burn image" item is in the burning program's menu varies from program to program. A web search for "burn image [program name]" should turn up lots of links and perhaps even video tutorials.

A search on YouTube will likely turn up tutorials on how to install the Linux distro of your choice, such as this one for Ubuntu 14.04.

Since you have an XP machine, you should list your CPU and RAM specs to see what distro would work on your pc. I doubt the regular Ubuntu would, but they have a couple of lighter weight versions that will. So for best help, list your specs.

Welcome to Linux Questions!

Which magazine and issue did you get your free DVD from? It may be easier trying to get you started with what you have if we knew.

I've got loads of free CDs and DVDs which I have collected from Linux Format magazine over the years. (All the way back to issue 1! Sheesh!)

Assuming you're running XP, put the DVD in the DVD reader, then close down XP and select restart which should then restart the computer and boot from the DVD. Most out-of-the-box PCs, unless they've been reconfigured, should boot from the DVD before the main hard disk.

The Linux Format freebies boot to a menu which allows you to select whatever distributions they're featuring that month and run them live, that is, they run in memory and leave the hard disk alone. I'd assume most magazine DVDs are similar. If the distribution is OK for you and you want to install it, there's an "Install" ikon somewhere on the desktop which will guide you through the process. It usually needs to know the date, time, where you are (time zone) keyboard and have a user/password set before installing. It'll also ask about partitioning the disk for installation. Unless you wanted to do something special, like be able to boot both XP and Linux, just choose "Use complete Disk"

See if you can get your distribution running in memory first and come back to us.

I'm not accepting your "Mature lady" excuse as a reason for being lost, as a mature gent, I've been lost for years, but perseverance and help from these guys generally gets results!

Play Bonny!

Hi. This http://www.wikihow.com/Boot-a-Computer-from-a-CD + the second link in my signature may help... best wishes and have fun.

Thank you for the replies. My free distro says "Ubuntu 14.04 Beta + Developer tutorial code and packages". I'm not really very tech minded so have to go quite slowly.

Regards Sapphirerose

To be exact, we'd need to know more about this laptop or computer.


Personally, I might suggest you buy a cd already made. All of these should boot up and run (maybe slowly) from a cd. https://www.osdisc.com/index.html?affiliate=distrowatch


It may be best if you can find a linux user in your area to make you a usb flash drive or install linux.

Each linux is slightly different. You'd have to decide which one you like. Generally it is a matter of looks these days. Older computers can't run the most pretty ones.

What area do you live in? Members here may wish to assist you over private messages or emails or even some might assist by phone. It's difficult to assist on some things on forums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_4Kh5kE3xA

http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfec...ts-trusty-tahr

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

so it seems you already have a DVD with Ubuntu on it. Have you been able to "boot" the DVD? Ie do you see "Ununtu"? Are you given the option to install it on your computer? If so, what is the problem? Please be very specific. Eg is there some question asked of you for which you don't know the answer? If so what is the question? What options are you given? Etc.

If none of this makes sense, please say so and tell us exactly what you are doing, and what instructions you are following. Again, please be very specific.
Evo2.

1 members found this post helpful.

But we don't know what she has. It's some disc from a mag.

Most of them seem quite tooken care of (to sell) when I was new I loved them (or if you don't have bandwidth...) although it doesn't sound as friendly as it could be?