Problem installing Linuxcnc on old Thinkpad

Well, I guess I'm in luck.

Here's basically what I did, and it's working so far. I'm going to add some unnecessary details just so someone else may be helped in the future.

1: Went to Ubuntu page you recommended. Was surprised it auto-downloaded, which is fine.

2: Looked at the side of my laptop and read what the drive said. "DVD Multirecorder RW DVD · R DL"

3: I wondered if the drive was going to write a DVD rather than a CD-R so I looked at the Device Manager and checked it out. Looked OK, because it said DVD-CD.

4: Wondered some more if the computer will automatically detect a blank CD rather than a blank DVD. Well it did correctly detect a CD-R.

5: I asked for someone in the house to help set up some ISO-burning software. Active@ ISO burner is what we used.

6: He did his thing, and am not sure if he had to change any settings. The software did detect that I had placed a CD-R in the drive.

7: It took about 3 minutes to burn the CD. So that was fast.

8: Putting it in the drive on my vintage Thinkpad 600E and it immediately popped up with an Ubuntu screen.

9: Success for now!

Thanks. I guess it came down to me wrongfully thinking an old drive would be able to run a DVD. No, it will run a CD-R though.

Thanks to both Tommy and Todd.