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submitted 5 days ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 points 4 days ago

Bittlocker is a pain. Simply booting a maintainance disk requied me to use the recovery codes to get back into windows.

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I encrypt everything, with unique complex passwords, that I have a safe mnemonic system for remembering and retrieving.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 5 days ago

I don't even know how to do it

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[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I used to, but then I nuked my install accidentally and I couldn't recover the encrypted data. I nuke my installs fairly regularly. I just did again this past week while trying to resize my / and my /home partitions. I've resigned myself to only encrypting specific files and directories on demand.

My phone is fully encrypted though.

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[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 4 points 5 days 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.

[-] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Every endpoint device I use is using full disk encryption, yes.

[-] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days 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.

[-] naeap@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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

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[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 3 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] bier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago

I made the mistake of not setting up encryption on my main 45TB zfs pool so I'm currently backing up everything on there to tape so I can recreate the pool (also need to change from mirrored to raidz) and then copying everything back to the drives. Although writing and reading each are around 6 days continuesly. Didn't want to bite the bullet and pay more then I absolutely had to and only got a LTO-4 drive and tapes.

[-] pemptago@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

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 5 days 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.

[-] 30p87@feddit.org 3 points 5 days 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.

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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
172 points (98.9% liked)

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