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I've heard that I can request a Ubuntu CD from Canonical, which will then be shipped to me. Is this actually true?

If so, how can I request this?

Kaz Wolfe
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abi jithu
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  • No, you have to pay for a pre-burnt CD. – Tim Mar 12 '17 at 18:18
  • It was true many years ago. Now, for obvious reasons, it makes no sense whatsoever. –  Mar 12 '17 at 18:45
  • Although Canonical no longer sends them for free, there are always sellers on ebay who sell Ubuntu on DVD at nominal cost and will ship it to you. Search for "Ubuntu 16.04" (or whatever version you're looking for) on ebay.com – Nick Weinberg Mar 12 '17 at 20:01

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Canonical used to offer free CDs but stopped after 10.10 due to it just being a huge cost for little to no gain.

Instead, you can burn your own disks or just buy a USB from the Canonical store. Alternatively, if there is a LoCo near you, you may be able to request free install media from them, but this is not guaranteed.

Even so, it is currently impossible to fit all of Ubuntu onto a CD. If you require optical media, you are going to have to use a DVD. Otherwise, it is recommended that you use a flash drive (which can be reformatted and reused when done).

Kaz Wolfe
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Ubuntu itself as non physical software is free. The price is for the physical disc, which is usually a few dollars.

From Canonical store

Source code for Ubuntu can be downloaded from archive.ubuntu.com or can be obtained from Canonical at the cost of media and shipping. Ubuntu, the Ubuntu logo and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Tooniis
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steeef
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No.

You can get the CD image for free. The image is essentially a copy of all of the data on the disc, and can be used to burn your own CD (which turns a blank CD/DVD into the same as what you would buy).

Think about it this way: if you go to the store and buy a blank disc, that costs money. If you bought a disc and turned it into an Ubuntu CD, you couldn't - financially speaking anyway - just give it away to anyone who asks. Doing it once isn't a big deal, but a hundred times? You lose money, and that's a bad thing for any organization, Canonical (the company that owns Ubuntu) not excluded.

You asked how to get a free disk. The closest would be to download the image (as of 3/12/17 the latest one is here) and burn it onto a blank DVD (a CD is too small to hold the image.

You can burn the image with a tool such as Brasero. However, if you're looking for the cheapest solution, you can use a USB. If you burn the image to a USB and use the USB to install Ubuntu, you can then clear the USB and use it for other purposes - music/photo storage, games, documents, etc. With a DVD-R, once it's burned, you can't use it for anything else. A DVD-RW can be written to multiple times, but is slower and smaller (and typically more expensive).

pixelherodev
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    Just to note: Canonical, for years, used to send out copies of Ubuntu DVDs completely free to anyone who asked -- so it's not a ridiculous question. They stopped doing that in 2010, though – Nick Weinberg Mar 12 '17 at 20:27