Well, right now its a Raring Ringtail (Ubuntu 13.040) but on Oct. 17 it will become a Saucy Salamander (Ubuntu 13.10)... (Do I need to ping Salamander? ;-)
Ok, now that I've helped, I'll add my $0.02 worth...
Ubuntu is one of the many Linux distributions available. Many of them allow you to download and burn a cd/r (some require a dvd/r due to size of the download file) and the cd (or dvd) is bootable and will allow you to run the operating system from the optical media without physically installing it on your machine. As such, it is a viable option to get a machine up and running if Windoze craps or is slimed/infested, er, infected... This assumes that you still have a functioning mother board, cpu, and cd/dvd player.
I played with Ubuntu and Mint live cd views and decided that there was little difference between them. When I built the Linux box (with a castaway case, power supply and motherboard combo - left from getting Mrs. NoC a new computer) I grabbed a Linux disk off the top of the stack and installed it. Turned out to be the Mint distro, and I have fallen back to that box occasionally while I'm working on the main windoze box. As an aside, that install was painless - required the LAN cable connected for internut access to find drivers, but other than that, no problem.
The requirements for Linux are not as demanding as for windoze, so if you have an old computer lying around, consider installing a Linux distro on it as a backup. Otherwise, consider downloading one of the available distros and keep the cd handy to boot from if the need arises.
This info parallels previous comments as support.
Any inference to a preference in Linux distros is purely unintentional, unless one of those companies wants to ship a bucket of money this way in which case I'll consider endorsing them to the exclusion of all others... ;-)
Ubuntu 12.04 is still the “stable” version to be supported until 2017 or something like that. I wouldn’t mind burning some discs to see what the other ones look and act like.
One more caveat to emptor....
If you have a bad hard drive, the bootable ROMs don't work because they automatically try to mount the bad drive. The CD-ROM disk is hard-coded to do the mount. Say you have two hard drives, and one is bad. You have to pull the data ribbon on the bad drive or you can't boot. You might be able to abort the attempted mount by removing the drive in the BIOS.
If there was any truth in advertising, it would have been called Snarky Salamander.
8:)
Thank you!