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Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

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Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#41
post #7

This is just changing the default permissions on a home directory -not a more complicated encrypted/systemd setup I thought it would be.

i had the exact same thought. i was diving into this with popcorn in hand thinking this is what it was about. i can't remember the scope of this but i remember reading about it sometime ago--regardless, if this was indeed systemd, it would have been the nail in the coffin for me to go full freebsd.

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#43
post #39

I remember a while ago, Ubuntu used encryptfs for home directories, but it was removed. Weird, because I thought it was a great idea

I’ve been using fscrypt to encrypt my home directory for over a year now and it seems to work fine: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fscrypt

Thanks for that... I’ll check it out

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#44
post #38
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally thought they were turning on homed with encryption by default, and was _super_ excited. I've been toying with doing that myself and having someone go first would be great.

If this encryption is still the same as it used to be a couple of years ago (encfs, IIRC), it's good they aren't. I stumbled on that multiple times before I learned not to turn this shit on. Every time on a new installation (which doesn't happen that often, so it's natural I was forgetting) I chose "do encrypt" option (because why not?), it was working perfectly fine long enough for me to settle in, and then one day…

That's a shame. Honestly though, full-disk is just so darn easy, and nearly as secure. I'll probably just stick with that for a good long while.

EDIT: Looks like LUKS is supported now, which is nice:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-homed#LUKS_home...

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#45
post #21

Makes sense to me, but I'd be much more excited to go back to not having the snap directory shoved in my face.

I’ve heard good things about pop os. Have you tried and liked any of the others? It was a bit unnerving to have my Firefox windows change all of a sudden due to upgrade.

Pop OS is great. Of course I had some issues with UEFI stuff (since they don't use GRUB) but their website had great tutorials for NVMe SSDs. And you have flatpak instead of snap (so no snap folder in your case). But most importantly, they have a killer tiling extension for Gnome. It is superb.

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#46

Ubuntu should develop shadow accounts - the user will log in to a completely different account of the same login depending on password. That is if someone forces you to log in you could use different password and pretend it is your stuff.

Just create second account. This feature you describe is needed like to one in a million users.

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#47

Even ubuntu can't keep themselves from smacking you in the face with a full-page cookie acceptance pop-up that illegally fails to provide an opt-out. Sad.

Did you try disabling Javascript? The page looks fine in text-only browser I use. Does need Javascript to convey the information. As users, we cannot control what web developers choose to do with websites, but we can control what software we use to make HTTP requests and read HTML.

s/Does need/Does not need/

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#48
To me, user accounts have always seemed like the more reasonable approach to sandboxing vs. cloning the universe to run a single program in a container.

Most of my systems have a user for myself, and one or two other users like `sketchy` or `test` or something for programs that I trust enough to run, but don't trust enough to not fuck up my home directory in some way (including modifying startup scripts, which IMHO should probably require sudo to edit, even for a normal user).

If the program is really sketchy and you're worried about it doing something like exfiltrating ~/Documents/taxes, then private home directories would definitely seem like a good default. You can always have an explicitly shared area like /home/shared/$user that defaults to public.

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#49

Makes sense to me, but I'd be much more excited to go back to not having the snap directory shoved in my face.

Its not perfect but there are some ways to hide it during normal use.

1. Create a file in your home called .hidden with one line "snap" to hide it in the file browser.

2. You can add --hide=snap to your ls alias to hide folders by that name.

Re: Private Home Directories for Ubuntu 21.04

#50
post #48

To me, user accounts have always seemed like the more reasonable approach to sandboxing vs. cloning the universe to run a single program in a container. Most of my systems have a user for myself, and one or two other users like `sketchy` or `test` or something for programs that I trust enough to run, but don't trust enough to not fuck up my home directory in some way (including modifying startup scripts, which IMHO s…

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