this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
157 points (98.8% liked)

Linux

49051 readers
1410 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

(page 4) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 4 points 1 day ago

Yes, and for the life of me I don't understand why there isn't a default LUKS with hibernate partition in the Debian installer.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I have stopped encrypting my drives, because if anything goes wrong and the system won't boot it makes recovery more difficult. It's a dual boot machine with Windows 11, and I had a lot of awkwardness with Bitlocker that led to me deciding to abandon encryption in both OSs. I save sensitive files to encrypted volumes in VeraCrypt.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I encrypted my professional laptop's drive in order to prevent access to company data and code in case of theft. And I'll probably encrypt my personal laptop as well because the SSH key can access company code.

As for the desktop, I didn't and probably never will, because theft is less likely and that would be a pain to handle for nightly backups (it is turned on with Wake-on-LAN and then a cron backs up my home directory to my NAS).

Finally, I won't encrypt my NAS as well for the same reason: it would quickly become a hassle as I would have to manually decrypt the drives every time it boots after a power outage.

[–] Extrasvhx9he@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah all my drives are encrypted with LUKS mostly because of home burglaries (bad area and whatnot). I still keep backups regardless on drives that are also encrypted

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yeah, on my laptop - because I travel with it and confidential data (like from my customers) could land in hands its not supposed to

No, in case of my desktop, because it's easier to access it in case of failure

[–] hallettj@leminal.space 2 points 1 day ago

My thinking is similar. I've seen this news story more than once:

laptop stolen containing customer data... hard drive was not encrypted

I don't generally have customer data, but it can happen every once in a while.

[–] 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.

[–] ilickfrogs@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I encrypt my desktop and laptop but not my servers. On desktop, that excludes drives that aren't my OS/boot drive.

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 2 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I encrypt my laptop and desktops and I think it’s worth it. I regret encrypting my servers because they need passwords to turn on. I couldn’t figure out how to handle it when away.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried it. Wonder if I was doing something dumb…

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did you get it working, if your boot is encrypted (I think) then I think you may have a hard time. Its been about 7 years since I did it. But you can have fstab and crypttab setup to pass the password.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)

I always encrypt my computer SSD as well as my external backup drive. I just wish that when installing a Linux distro and when selecting encryption that it would work with multiple drives

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Doesn't Pop have that by default? I think others have too.

Anyway, yes for basically everything. Except my servers main partition, because otherwise recovering from crashes would be horribly annoying or unsafe if I'd use cryptssh. And if the dns+dhcp/gateway/VPN server crashes I'd definitely need 22 open.

[–] NewOldGuard@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

Yes absolutely, it is the building block of my security posture. I encrypt because I don’t want thieves to have access to my personal data, nor do I want law enforcement or the state to have access if they were to raid my house. I’m politically active and a dissident so I find it vital to keep my data secure and private, but frankly everybody should be doing it for their own protection and peace of mind

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

I don't do it for my desktop because 1) I highly doubt my desktop would get stolen. 2) I installed Linux before I was aware of encryption, and don't have any desire to do a reinstall on my desktop at this time.

For my laptop, yes, I do (with exception of the boot partition), since it would be trivial to steal and this is a more recent install. I use clevis to auto-unlock the drive by getting keys from the TPM. I need to better protect myself against evil maids, though - luckily according to the Arch Wiki Clevis supports PCR registers.

Yes because my distro also have encrypted /boot included

Mostly I don't, but I want to start to. I only have one laptop encrypted and of course I keep my phones encrypted.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

Yes because it is one click

If I delete my drive, it is rubbish

It doesnt impact my performance much

[–] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

I don’t have FDE (BitLocker) enabled on my Windows 11 gaming PC. It sits in my house and has nothing on it but video games and video game related shit. I don’t even have my password manager installed for logging in to Steam, GoG or whatever other launcher. I manually type passwords in from the vault on my phone if the app doesn’t support QR code login like discord. Also I paid for this ridiculous m.2 nvme drive, I’m not going to just give up iops bc i want my game install files encrypted.

I don’t use FDE on my NAS. Again it doesn’t leave my house. I probably should I guess, bc there is some stuff on there that would cause me to have industry certs revoked if they leaked, but idk I don’t. Everything irreplaceable is backed up off site, but the down time it would take to rebuild my pirated media libraries from scratch vs just swapping disks and rebuilding has me leery.

I have FDE enabled on both my MacBooks. They leave the house with me, it seems to make sense.

I don’t use FDE on Linux VMs I create on the MacBooks, the disk is already encrypted.

My iphone doesn’t have the option to not use FDE I don’t think.

I use encrypted rsync backups to store NAS stuff in the cloud. I use a PGP key on my yubikey to further encrypt specific files on my MacBooks as required beyond the general FDE.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

I encrypt my home folder and Windows install just in case someone breaks into my house and steals my computer. Super annoying entering my password each boot though.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Absolutely. LUKS full disk encryption. Comes as an opt-in checkbox on Ubuntu, for example.

And I too cannot understand why this is not opt-out rather than opt-in. Apparently we've decided that only normies on corporate spyware OSs need security, and we don't.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is a major downside to encryption: If you forget your password or your tpm fails and you've not backed things up, then that data is gone forever. If someone doesn't have anything incriminating or useful to theives on their device, the easier reparability might justify not enabling it.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Why is this a problem for us and not for ordinary dummies on Android? It's been the default there for years already.

[–] that_leaflet@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Phones make the encryption invisible to the user.

That’s not the case on Linux unless you’re willing to put in a bit of work to set up TPM unlocking yourself or use one of the few distros that use TPM by default, like Aeon.

And even then Aeon’s not perfect. Sooner or later the TPM will fail and you’ll have to enter your long backup password and reenroll the TPM.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

Android backs up data to the cloud. If the phone breaks or gets stolen, you don't need to recover data from it - you can just pull it from Google's servers.

In addition, people tend to not treat their phones as "permanent storage". The concept of losing or breaking their phone is probably more clear, so they make sure to back it up in some way to the cloud or their desktop.

Also, it's much more likely for a phone to be stolen than a laptop or desktop.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't, I didn't do it back then and I ended up using this system for much longer than I thought I would(4+ years). I want to do it next time but I don't feel like reinstalling just for that.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›