I just picked up a refurb Latitude 2100 with Ubuntu 9.04.  On sale, quite a bargain.  So the first time I fired it up it says something to the effect "... you acknowledge you have read and agree with the EULA... press any key"  Well, there is no EULA document in the materials which came with the unit.  If it is on the CDs that does no good because 1) the 2100 has no CD drive and 2) even if it did I would have to "press any key to accept..." before I could access the CD.

So just for laughs I contacted tech "support" by chat.  No clue - told me to call a customer service phone #.  No clue - transferred me to some other Dell Dude.  No clue - told me to call technical support.  Told him he would need technical support if he could not get a copy of the applicable ELUA emailed to me.  Still waiting.  Reminds me about the old saying about 7 monkees copulating with a football.  No, I don't really give a flying football about the EULA.  I have been using Linux for many years and am familiar with GPL, Copy Left, Creative Commons etc.

That said the Latitude 2100 is an absolutely neat little toy.  I have migrated the diagnostics partition to a bootable SD card - sort of like a modern floppy :-) I have also backed up the various partitions using g4l and am looking forward to upgrading it to Lucid Lynx when it is released in the near future.  That will allow me to recover a significant portion of the SSD capacity by removing the diagnostics and reinstall partitions.

Perhaps by then Dell will figure out that if they want customers to acknowledge they have read the EULA then Dell will have to provide an accessible copy of the document.

Cheers,

Ken