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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Do you encrypt your drives and why or why not? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I was recently intrigued to learn that only half of the respondents to a survey said that they used disk encryption. Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows have been increasingly using encryption by default. On the other hand, while most Linux installers I've encountered include the option to encrypt, it is not selected by default.

Whether it's a test bench, beater laptop, NAS, or daily driver, I encrypt for peace of mind. Whatever I end up doing on my machines, I can be pretty confident my data won't end up in the wrong hands if the drive is stolen or lost and can be erased by simply overwriting the LUKS header. Recovering from an unbootable state or copying files out from an encrypted boot drive only takes a couple more commands compared to an unencrypted setup.

But that's just me and I'm curious to hear what other reasons to encrypt or not to encrypt are out there.

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[–] pemptago@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes. I encrypt because theft. I know PopOS and Mint make it 1-click ez. ...unless of course you want home and root on a separate drives. That scales difficulty real fast. There's plenty of tutorials, and I managed, but I had to patch together different ones to get a basic setup-- Never mind understanding exactly what I did and repeating it (the latest challenge I've been dragging my feet on). I do hope this is an area that sees more development in the near future.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

That does make encryption was less appealing to me. On one of my machines / and /home are on different drives and parts of ~ are on yet another one.

I consider the ability to mount file systems in random folders or to replace directories with symlinks at will to be absolutely core features of unixoid systems. If the current encryption toolset can't easily facilitate that then it's not quite RTM for my use case.