Ubuntu UK LoCo CDs

The allocation of CDs for the Ubuntu UK team arrived yesterday, to the excitement of the chickens. They have been using Kubuntu 10.10 for the last six months and are keen to evaluate the features of 11.04 (I prefer GNOME, the chickens prefer KDE).

Bored chicken with last year's distro

They started the upgrade by reading the CD sleeve carefully

Clarabelle reads the fine manual

and then installed the new Kubuntu 11.04 on a piece of string in the run so they can peck at it and check their feathers in the mirror.

Installing Kubuntu 11.04

After the upgrade I took their old Kubuntu 10.10 CD and gave it a bit of a wash, when it stopped smelling too much I put it in my laptop and booted it, there was a bit of a crack on the outside edge and it didn’t fully boot, but it got to the bootloader and did about 15 seconds of productive loading before it failed. Check back in 6 months to find out how the Kubuntu 11.04 CD boots.

So now we need to decide how best to use the remaining 49 Kubuntu CDs, 50 Ubuntu Server CDs and 250 Ubuntu CDs. Preferably in a slightly less frivolous way than entertaining livestock.

Now that shipit has stopped doing individual CD requests we are going to reserve some for people on dialup who want CDs. The procedure for this is as follows.

  • Email me, alanbell at ubuntu.com with a clear subject line saying you would like a CD.
  • I will then respond with my snail mail address.
  • You send me a stamped self addressed envelope big enough to hold a CD.
  • I put CD in envelope and send it back to you.

So this is mildly inconvenient, and costs you more than free, but only about a quid, in postage. If you are on dialup (or an obsessive Ubuntu CD collector) this is still well worth doing, those on broadband have probably already got the .iso and burned it already.

Another batch will go to people distributing recycled PCs pre-installed with Ubuntu like Remploy I want these PCs to go out with an official CD in the pack, and some information about the LoCo team for the end user. Any company or charity involved with recycling PCs for distribution in the UK through the RaceOnline initiative or anything else is welcome to contact me to arrange CDs and help with doing an OEM build image for cloning (so on first boot it asks the user their name). These kind of organisations are not going to engage Canonical services, they just don’t have the margins, working constructively with them is certainly something we can do as a community team.

The rest will go to events and conferences where we have a presence, which means we need to have a presence at some events. I would really like the team to run a few bring-a-box installfests at university computing societies. If you want to help organise one that would be great, I am happy to support it with CDs and help get some people along to help.

If you have further ideas on how to use the CDs then do comment here, on the Ubuntu-UK mailing list or at the next team meeting on IRC.

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4 Comments

  • Someone says:

    Isn’t this a bit offensive?

    • Alan Bell says:

      no, they didn’t show any sign of being offended, they seemed quite pleased with it really.

  • Michael says:

    hahaha nice

  • alan cocks says:

    In principle I have an ongoing need for a quantity around 15 per month which I offer at the computer fair. I also give talks and other stuff eg at FE college not many months ago and soon at Africa Gathering http://www.africagathering.org/events/africa-gathering-london-2011/programme. However, what I can/want to offer depends on date and version. 10.04.2 is often not available from Canonical CD, only 10.04 and unfortunately 10.10 has a significant installer bug gotcha, so I avoid unrestrained public use of them. I will generally burn my own CDs for these but a retail looking pack always will impress. I would like to stay in touch about this but unless you have 10.04.2 available asap, I will hope to be in contact over time.

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