this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Security is an insanely broad topic. As an average desktop user, keep your system up to date, and don't run random programs from untrusted sources (most of the internet). This will cover almost everyones needs. For laptops, I'd recommend enabling drive encryption during installation, though note that data recovery is harder with it enabled.
That is good advice, however sadly a lot of install scripts are basically: download this script from us, and pipe it to a root shell.
Install scripts for what exactly?
Majority of software is packaged natively.
i personally wouldn't recommend encrypted drive for a beginner though
Why not? You (usually) just click the check box during install, and you have 1 extra password when you boot up your system. Doesn't seem too hard but I might be missing something.
It's surprisingly annoying trying to configure LUKS full disk encryption. I had to look up instructions many times over on Mint.
Wait what? I don't use mint, but with every other distro you just check the box at install and that is it.
Are you saying its hard to configure after you have already installed? I could imagine it might be, but why not export a list of programs you use and back up the home directory. Reinstall and check the box, restore home, and import your package list?
Firstly, LUKS is under "physical disk for encryption" which is a stupid and confusing name.
Secondly, if you want to dual-boot with LUKS you need to manually configure the partitions.
Thirdly, you need to seperately assign root to be installed on the "physical disk for encryption", and they have multiple volumes for that in the list.
Fourthly, as with all LUKS encrypted Linux distros you need a seperate EFI, boot, and root partition.
Fifthly, all of this partitioning is on a really small window that can't be resized.
I don't dual boot, so I guess there is that. But everything else seems very confusing. All other installers say, do you want this encrypted? You click yes. And that's it.
TBH I've installed Mint, Kubuntu, and OpenSUSE and I don't remember which ones had which issues. I think they're all Mint but maybe not.
when you fuck shit up you can't really easily boot in from a usb drive and learn the recovery process
Better to lose the data than have it stolen.
It's a few extra steps to start fixing, but it's still definitely possible once you get the crypto device mapper.