this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
94 points (76.7% liked)
Linux
48199 readers
1369 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
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I use partial disk encryption myself using luksCrypt but without the auto unlock, your comment on the crackhead stealing it doesn't help you in that scenario, you 1000% can tie a partition encryption or home directory encryption and have it automatically decrypt using either a USB drive or TPM but, as is with Windows and MacOS if your PC gets stolen, the drive will be unlocked automatically regardless if it is you, it's only if the drive gets stolen on it's own that an auto unlock drive would help you, but it's not likely that only that will happen. At that point it might not be worth encrypting as a whole if that was your main concern.
My previous laptop got struck by lightning last month. Because I had a passphrase & not TPM for unlocking, I stripped the NVMe from the board, put it in an enclosure, entered the passphrase, & now I can access all my data for recovering from that situation. Had I tied it to TPM, I wouldn’t be able to recover my data (ZFS & Bcachefs only have one ‘slot’ for passphrases so no secondary, backup key)—while, as you pointed out, a thief can just boot the laptop they stole to get the data. Point being: passphrases offer advantages while being dead simple.
shame it got struck by lightning, in another world you would've won the lottery with those chances