AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...
One of the new features in Ubuntu 8.10 is the ability to create an encrypted directory for content you do not want others to access. Oh, by the way, did you know that anyone can read your files that are in your home directory? Here is an example of sue logged in and able to open files in mike's home directory. However, note that they are opened read-only so they cannot be changed.
Laptops are easily lost or stolen and in order to protect your emails, web passwords, encryption keys, etc., you should really think about encrypting (at least) your home directory.
Frequent re-installations of operating system due to crashes is always been a problem for many of the linux users, and my case is also the same.... Everytime i start with doing something like trying some new commands or editing some configuration files and finally ends up with an 'OS crash' and a fresh installation thereafter.
One feature I've been looking forward to in Ubuntu 8.10 is the encrypted private directory. With this feature, you'ecll get a folder called Private in your home. Private will work just like a normal folder, but it will be transparently encrypted and automatically locked and unlocked when you log in and out.
There are some reasons why you may need to move your home directory to its own partition, it could be because you run out of space, or because you may want to share it with another distro in a dual Linux boot installation, well lets start.
How can users protect themselves from the loss of important data when a computer goes missing? Well, the latest release of Ubuntu makes this not only possible, but frighteningly easy!
Ubuntu 7.10 had introduced support for install-time encryption to provide a fully encrypted LVM. However, this feature was only available through Ubuntu's alternate CD installer and not Ubiquity, Ubuntu's popular LiveCD installer. We had hoped the disk encryption support would be added in Ubuntu 8.04 and then later Ubuntu 8.10, but that never occurred.
Like the Ubuntu 11.04 installer, the Kubuntu 11.04 installation program configures just two partitions by default. These are for /, the root directory, and Swap, disk space for use as virtual memory. To make upgrades less tasking, it is recommended that a separate partition be created for /home, the directory where your home folder will be located.
