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.
I don’t even know how to do it
Tick a box when installing some distros. Like OoenSUSE.
Never got it when installing Ubuntu. Any way of enabling it after install?
I dont believe it is possible to do after install
…well, technically, yes.
If you are well-versed in the guts of the distro (grub, /etc/fstab, /etc/crypttab…), and have extra space, you could spend part of your weekend shifting partitions around and moving everything to the encrypted side, and eventually re-configuring your install and removing the old part. (Oh and don’t forget to chown your /home data if you have multiple users.) I’ve been there, it’s not fun. It’s fun[tm]. It’s just far easier and less error prone to re-install if you can.
(Yeah, I’m stretching the definition of “enabling it” reeealy thin here… 🙃 )
I mean yes… but realistically no. Also the risk of data loss at that point is high. you will miss things. the best approach would be to make a proper backup reinstall and put the data back.
that’s what makes it exciting 😓 😓 😓