All of my responses below are based on experience with Truecrypt 5.x or Linux LUKS whole drive encryption (which is what Ubuntu uses for it' WDE installation option).
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 7:28 PM, turtle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How necessary is total hard drive encryption of a average linux laptop > for small business use, personal stuff? Depends on what would happen if the stuff on it were to fall into The Wrong Hands. This is totally a personal call. > How many of you all do it? I do it on every laptop I own/control that is fast enough that I don't feel the performance hit. That means everything except my little Via-based machine. > 1) I am really concerned with useablilty I hate typing especially allot of > passphseses. You only enter a passphrase at boot. > 2) I loose USB sticks, making a bootable USB is a PTIA. Don't boot off of USB. > 3) I am not really a target for theft since A)I am poor (no million dollar ban > accounts) and B) My laptop is old and not a MAC. The question is not what would someone else gain by getting your data, but what you would lose. > 4) I herd that if you get taken to court or anything you have to decrypt it > anyway. That's debatable. Personally, I think it's hard to argue with "I don't remember.". Conspiracy theories aside, it's unlikely that any court agent will try to beat it out of you. > 5) Encrypting the whole thing is a performance hit. It is, but on modern systems, it's not big. If the machine is still fast enough after encrypting, what difference does it make? > 6)Making a custom initramfs for a distro seams like a real PITA. This can be automatic. See Ubuntu WDE installation. > 7)Encryption does not work well with several different disrtos using the > same /home. This does complicate things. My solution is to justualize the other distros so they never see the bare metal anyway. Makes it a non-issue. > 8)My personal photos on line publicly anyway that is 50% of my /home disk use > the major use is music. Probably don't need to be encrypted then. > > I am considering just encrypting the /home or part of the /home. Good idea. There are plans for Ubuntu Intrepid to include a "private" directory in the home dir that is encrypted. > However it is recomended to just encrypt the entire drive. By whom, and for what use case? It's usually the simplest option, but if that's not your most important criteria... -- -Regards- -Quentin Hartman- _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
