Where is Alternate CD? Where is the encrypted filesystem opt

[tixos]

cmon we are nearly in 2012, and your still not including the alternate installer?

I read a post from 2007 where somebody was requesting this, and the reply was 'its not on our top priority list'. Well nearly 5 years on and you havent got round to it? whats the coo on this one.

I feel being able to install a fully encrypted system from the installer is a must in this day and age, i feel the ubuntu desktop installer should have this option now, but thats no the issue here.

You should be providing an alternate installer for this feature at the very least, am i missing something? if i am please point it out, if there is another method i would like to try it as i wish to help test the RC

[richyrich]

Nice attitude for your first post.

Some reading material for you, if you so choose ;

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 76&start=0

http://www.stealth-x.com/articles/the-p ... yption.php

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=78290

[tixos]

The attitude came from seeing a 5 year old post about the same issue. The same post dismissed the idea of installing mint and then LUKS from aptitude.

My question was why is there no alternate installer, and if there ever will be? i along with many users will pick other distros because of this, and im sure you want every user you can get

also i dont need the ins and outs of full disk encryption, this is my decision and i am fully aware of the drawbacks if they are not addressed

[tixos]

Ok, i got a reply from IRC channel, i was told there IS NO ALTERNATE CD, and to 'live with it' as there never will be.

I was told to use another distro.

great advert for the project....ill be sure to pass the message on.

[ThistleWeb]

Ok, i got a reply from IRC channel, i was told there IS NO ALTERNATE CD, and to 'live with it' as there never will be.

I was told to use another distro.

great advert for the project....ill be sure to pass the message on.

Mint is a small team with limited resources aimed at new users. Most users don't know what encryption is, let alone have a need for advanced installer options. The Ubuntu based editions do have an encrypted /home option which is more than enough for most folks. What would you prefer? We tell you that your choice of install method is overkill, that you don't need it, and that Mint is the distro for you? Or that Mint doesn't have, and has no plans to provide the options you want, and you'd be better suited with something else? We could potentially gain a new user by deception, but chose not to, because it'd be by deception.

Remember to pass on the link to this thread along with the message eh?

[richyrich]

@Thistleweb , isn't the paranoia so obvious? the stress in every sentence, I sure couldn't live like that. And you are surely correct, Mint will never be targeted towards people with so much to hide !

[ThistleWeb]

@Thistleweb , isn't the paranoia so obvious? the stress in every sentence, I sure couldn't live like that. And you are surely correct, Mint will never be targeted towards people with so much to hide !

There's plenty of legit uses for that level of security, it's just not your average home user. I'm sure offices with sensitive information would need that, but they'd be using Windows because the databases they have to connect to need Windows, and that certified "secure" applications are Windows only applications. If at some point they can be persuaded to switch to Linux, they're not gonna touch Mint due to the short release cycles and community support. They're gonna go with something like RHEL, which does have that level of security.

It's about proportionality. Regular users do have private stuff, but they don't have people targeting them specifically looking for it. Distros aimed at regular users allow you to easily throw up some defences to then forget about them and get on with your computing. Encrypting /home and seamlessly logging in for one, enabling a firewall with a click for another.

[richyrich]

I wonder ? . . would a Company or Corporation ever allow their employees to use their own pc's and laptops (and choice of OS's) for sensitive data ? What a mess that would be! Can you imagine working in their IT dept and having to provide support and security for everything and anything that is out there ?

[monkeyboy]

Seems somehow all too familiar.
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview. ... did=156516

[ThistleWeb]

I wonder ? . . would a Company or Corporation ever allow their employees to use their own pc's and laptops (and choice of OS's) for sensitive data ? What a mess that would be! Can you imagine working in their IT dept and having to provide support and security for everything and anything that is out there ?

Exactly, it'd be a company supplied laptop set up by the companies IT dept, and would be lucky to use Linux at all, let alone Mint.

[richyrich]

Thanks monkeyboy, I was about to reply and name him a vampire, and you have provided corroborating evidence.

Thistleweb, you replied exactly as the Reforming the Vampire (section 3) suggests.

http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/

[michaelzap]

Attitude aside, tixos is absolutely right. It's currently very difficult to install Mint to an encrypted disk or partition, and it shouldn't be. It's not paranoid to encrypt your laptop drive - it's common sense.

I am running LMDE now with an encrypted home directory, and it was a pain to setup (had to be done after installation) and has some annoying kinks (every time I run a command or program as root my home directory is unmounted, which can cause major issues). Plus I prefer to encrypt the whole system so that the etc, var, and tmp directories are also protected. The easiest way that I've been able to do this with LMDE in the past is to first install Debian or Crunchbang (both of whose installers can handle encryption) and then change my sources to Mint's and update, but that takes a long time and is unnecessarily complex.

All that really needs to happen is for the installer to be able to mount and use encrypted partitions. It would be nice if it could create them also, but that's easy enough to do ahead-of-time with Gparted. Lots of other distros can do this (Fedora, etc.), and Mint is at least as good as they are and deserves a fully-functional installer.

FYI: The encrypted home directory option in the Mint 12 RC installer is broken, so at the moment there is no way to get an encrypted Mint 12 system unless you do that after installation (which is somewhat complicated and easy to screw up).

[minto23]

Here is a guide: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/344