[Eug-lug] Hard drive encryption

[turtle]

How necessary is total hard drive encryption of a average linux laptop 
for small business use, personal stuff? How many of you all do it?
I have been casually reading up on it for the past month or so.
It seems like a good topic for a local workshop.

1) I am really concerned with useablilty I hate typing especially allot of 
passphseses.
2) I loose USB sticks, making a bootable USB is a PTIA.
3) I am not really a target for theft since A)I am poor (no million dollar ban 
accounts) and B) My laptop is old and not a MAC.
4) I herd that if you get taken to court or anything you have to decrypt it 
anyway.
5) Encrypting the whole thing is a performance hit.
6)Making a custom initramfs for a distro seams like a real PITA.
7)Encryption does not work well with several different disrtos using the 
same /home. 
8)My personal photos on line publicly anyway that is 50% of my /home disk use 
the major use is music.

I am considering just encrypting the /home or part of the /home. However it is 
recomended to just encrypt the entire drive.
Some links to things I have read:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Encrypt_Your_Home_Directory_Using_CFS
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/disk-cryptography.xml

Any thoughts or ideas?

-- 
Cheers
Turtle
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