Well said. LUKS implements AES-256, which is also entrusted by the U.S. government and various other governments to protect data from state and non-state adversaries.
Possibly overestimating the value of the data entrusted to me, but whenever I see that xkcd, I like to think that I at least have the option to remain silent and die with dignity if I really don’t want the contents of my disk out there.
I wish I found a guide like that back when I first made the move to FDE. Regardless, I was adamantly against reinstalling and painstakingly replicating my customizations, so I came up with a hacky way of tacking on FDE.
It went something along the lines of:
The text editor shortcut on my taskbar runs a sort of autosave script in ~/.drafts. I wanted my text editor to function more like the one on my phone so I can just jot down random thoughts without going through the whole ritual of naming and saving. It creates YYYYMMDD_text in ~/.drafts (or YYYYMMDD_text_1 etc. if it already exists) and launches Pluma, which I also have configured to autosave every 10 minutes.
The other thing extends beyond Linux itself a bit. I like to joke that I have the most secure NT 4 / Windows 95 lookalike ever put together. Aside from the encrypted and hardened Debian base (/boot is also encrypted), I was in part inspired by Apple’s parts pairing (yikes!). So my coreboot is configured to only accept my boot disk. If it’s swapped out or missing, or if I want to boot something else, it will ask for a password. In the unlikely event my machine gets stolen, the thief must at a minimum reflash the BIOS or replace the motherboard to make it useful again. Idk, it amuses me every time I think about it.
It’s nice getting a glimpse as to what fraction of Linux users are using disk encryption. Full disk encryption is becoming the default on mainstream OSes, but not in most of the Linux installers I’ve encountered. Always made me curious just how many people went out of their way to encrypt their Linux install.
I personally encrypt everything except for VMs already in an encrypted device or USB drives that need to work with non-Linux machines. It’d be interesting to hear what other people’s reasons to encrypt their disks or not are.
Biolinum O for desktop
Liberation Mono for terminal
I’ve used this Windows 10 live image to run the occasional windows-only diagnostic tools and firmware updates: https://github.com/VulpesSARL/MiniNT5-Tools
It doesn’t choke loading GUI programs like the install disc command prompt and doesn’t have any weird blobs except for windows itself.
The level of detail and control in the Properties dialog from the file explorer in Windows. Also its ability to easily search by metadata like the bitrate of media files.
Nice thing is that the X230 still closes properly with a thin sliding webcam cover.
Old hardware indeed, but 768 pixels ought to be enough for any window
“suicide linux”
Looked it up with quotes and the first update in the first search result:
Update 2011-12-26
Someone has turned Suicide Linux into a genuine Debian package. Good show!
:(
It’s nice and easy on the eyes. I conjecture that glossy and matte (as seen here) styles of skeuomorphism gave way to more abstract design since:
If it were up to me, the red line would be when buttons and interactive elements are indistinguishable from text. The stock Android settings is probably among the worst offenders in this regard.
What I really miss is light mode that isn’t hated for blinding users and dark mode that doesn’t plunge the user into the void. Those “toolbars” look lovely, perfect for any lighting condition or time of day. I’ve yet to understand why, at present, designers insist on pure white everywhere when it comes to light mode. Maybe everyone is using the night light filter so it doesn’t matter? At least pure black dark mode makes sense for power efficiency on OLEDs.
Microsoft shouldn’t revoke license keys unless it’s a leaked VL key being spread around for piracy or the like. The semi-annual major updates seem to count as “versions” like Windows 11 22H2 (now end of service) vs Windows 11 24H2 (current). That said, it’s a poorly worded error message and it doesn’t help that Windows 11 will cry wolf at every opportunity.
Debian Stable. Predictable, low-maintenance, and well-supported. From time to time, I think about switching over to Alpine or even BSD, but the software selection and abundance of Q&A posts for Debian and its derivatives keeps me coming back. Having been a holdout on older Windows versions in the past, I’m quite used to waiting for new features and still amazed at how much easier life is with a proper package manager.
XFCE4. It’s intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line: MM/DD HH:mm:ss
Enough features so that it “just works” (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.
Can’t wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don’t have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.
What did it in were the semi-annual mandatory feature updates, which restored the invasive settings and bloat I worked hard to remove. Already being acquainted with Linux at that point, I began dual-booting and later having Windows on an entirely separate machine for a few stubborn programs I needed for work.
What made me acquainted with Linux was looking for alternatives after the loss of theming options and the start menu in Windows 8. That eventually brought me to my present Debian setup with the Chicago 95 theme, which recreates (and even improved) the workflow and stability I had grown to love in Windows 2000.
The first time I ever booted into a Linux iso, however, was to migrate files off of my machine, which was excruciatingly slow to transfer files under XP.
IMF: Imperialist Monetary Fund
If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something…
Damn, me over here trying to flex my Chicago95-ass X201T to my classmates
When maximizing uptime, Debian is the no-fuss way to go.