Laptop: Dell Latitude D620

What distribution do you recommend for this laptop? Will it support wireless? Can I test non-destructively (e.g. LiveCD)?

A Linux distro to be considered needs to be able to support encrypting the drive, as well.

Current XP setup is a dual monitor setup (via a docking station). 2x Dell 19" (1280x1024) LCD monitors attached (one via Digital, another Analog). Can I reasonably expect this setup to be successful under a Linux configuration?

Another one of the primary challenges I have is that this laptop has Windows XP with Safeboot(tm) loaded. However, installing an OS (and altering the boot sector) at all will render my XP install useless - dualbooting is probably out of the question.

Hi There!

I own DELL LATITUDE D600 and IBM THINKPAD 600E. I am using PC Linux OS 2008 MiniMe. Best distro I have ever used. Not problem-free but I love it. Try it. Circa 200 mb live cd to download.

I have configured on it 2 wifi cards + lan card + ppp conection and could swap between sharing internet between eth0 rausb0 and wlan0 maybe if I knew more I could share Internet on all 3 of them without swapping + I had 2nd monitor connected and there was no hassle and my card ati radeon 9000 is preety lausy. I couldnt make it to expand screen to 2nd monitor but I could display 1 desktop on both of them. I was using it with Windows XP dual boot via grub but who needs windows if you can use wine or virtualbox? Never tried outlook express on it but I got elder scrolls 3 morrowind, neverwinter nights and warcraft II battle net edition running on it. I am using it as a file server and printer server and I have to say that I only have 512 mb of ram. Its a very basic distro but you are avoiding getting something You dont want and if you need it download it with synaptics or apt-get or get tarball and install from the source but distro has plenty of repos.

You dont loose anything by downloading the live cd and trying it beside few minutes of time and 1 cd... And this could be begining of a beutyful friendship. Its damn fast...

Good luck

Andy

I have a Dell Precision M6300...
I am a long time user of Fedora and have a pretty sweet dual-boot system with both Linux and Vista.
Prior dual-boot setups I have had were Linux/XP. I use the NT boot-loader which either launches Linux Grub (which allows me to go back to Windows if I need to) or directly to Windows.
I run wireless without any problem plus I have added a second 1-GigE NIC.
I've never had a dual monitor setup... but maybe I'll get around to trying that out someday.
Dell also has a Linux site... linux.dell.com which might be useful to you.
Good Luck!

The laptop is cool. I purchase a new from dell. However, The battery of running time is too low. I bought new one from <link deleted>. Does anyone have this problem?