I use Arch Linux with LUKS for full disk encryption.
Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
21–30 of 155 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#22I'm running Debian, so I have LUKS full-disk encryption running; I consider it a sine qua non of running a personal computer. I wish it were a bit easier to enable per-user encrypted home directories as well (yes, layered: CPUs are fast, and security is worth the cost), but … I'm lazy.
I don't understand... If you've got the requisite ecryptfs packages installed, you can just run something like: "adduser --encrypt-home newusername" and there you go. It works on top of any filesystem, because it encrypts on a per-file basis.
Yeah, but (last time I installed) that wasn't an option at install time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#23Yup, encrypt every time. Otherwise, they may be able to snag your SSH RSA keys off of the hard drive, and if you've password protected it, they can try to brute force it. Also, it helps safeguard against border patrol wanting to access your data while traveling.
They can still bruteforce your disk.
They can still bruteforce you.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#24LUKS, combined with suspend to disk. Both on my laptops and the on-prem homeserver that holds all my personal data.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#25I use the standard hardware encryption of my SSD (a Samsung 830 in my 2012-era Dell XPS 13), which requires I enter the passphrase when I turn my machine on. Advantages: - OS neutral - Seemingly as fast as running 'unencrypted' (I assume performance is identical, the only difference being the passphrase is stored in my head rather than the BIOS) Disadvantages: - Limited to an 8-char (!) ASCII passphrase - I've no ide…
That sounds like an annoyance, not encryption to me.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#26- Bitlocker on my Windows 10 Pro laptop (because I'm more concerned about an everyday thief prying open my laptop than a government agent)
- ChromeOS built-in encryption/LUKS FDE on the Fedora partition on my Chromebook
I should probably encrypt my Android phone and tablet, but I had a bad experience with performance overhead when I encrypted my last phone.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#27I use the standard hardware encryption of my SSD (a Samsung 830 in my 2012-era Dell XPS 13), which requires I enter the passphrase when I turn my machine on. Advantages: - OS neutral - Seemingly as fast as running 'unencrypted' (I assume performance is identical, the only difference being the passphrase is stored in my head rather than the BIOS) Disadvantages: - Limited to an 8-char (!) ASCII passphrase - I've no ide…
That sounds like an annoyance, not encryption to me.
Generally as you increase security you will lose usability and vice versa. It's about weighing the advantages against the disadvantages.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#28I use the standard hardware encryption of my SSD (a Samsung 830 in my 2012-era Dell XPS 13), which requires I enter the passphrase when I turn my machine on. Advantages: - OS neutral - Seemingly as fast as running 'unencrypted' (I assume performance is identical, the only difference being the passphrase is stored in my head rather than the BIOS) Disadvantages: - Limited to an 8-char (!) ASCII passphrase - I've no ide…
That sounds like an annoyance, not encryption to me.
It's the 8-char password that I find absurd - that would take about 2 hours to brute force max.
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#29I just use Truecrypt 7.1a, and encrypt the entire drive, so it requires a password before booting.
Does this affect performance? Esp for things like photoshop?
Re: Ask HN: How do you encrypt your laptops?
#30I just use Truecrypt 7.1a, and encrypt the entire drive, so it requires a password before booting.
Yes that's what I do too and my external drives are also encrypted with it and use the same password. So one password on start-up mounts those as well and always to the same drive letter.
Having all memory sticks encrypted makes for wonderful peace of mind.