One feature I’ve been looking forward to in Ubuntu 8.10 is the encrypted private directory. With this feature, you’ll 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.
The encryption is provided by eCryptfs, a kernel-native cryptographic filesystem. I’ve written before on using it to create a private directory in Ubuntu 8.04.
At the moment, it seems that the private directory is not set up by default. There’s an option to do so in the alternate but not the graphical installer. I hope this is offered as an option in both installers, or even set up by default. Many users aren’t even going to know about this useful feature if it need to be set up in the terminal.
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