Linux

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.

I was like "Which of the 6 systems I use on a daily basis do I answer these questions for?"

• I have my gaming PC which runs Linux Mint and I mostly use for Minecraft and Stellaris.
• I have my daily driver laptop, which duel boots between Linux Mint and QubesOS.
• I have my file and dev server (it runs a bunch of virtual machines I use for various projects) which runs Debian and shares all my files over sshfs.
• I have my backup server which rsyncs with the fileserver and runs Debian. The motherboard is like 12 years old, but it is pretty much just a house for a bunch of 8 TB drives.
• I have the living room TV, which is an older Dell All In One that runs Linux Mint.
• I have a weird frankenputer with a beefy GPU in it (better than the GPU in my gaming machine) that runs Debian and gets used for locally hosted AI experimentation. A friend gave me the GPU for Christmas and I had nothing to put it in, so I threw shit together from a bunch of the old PCs sitting in closets / garages around my house. Because I'm that guy.

And like... when I took the survey, I answered "yes" to having a firewall, even though I don't run one locally on any of PCs (except the laptop, when it's booted into Qubes because duh). BUT all of these are behind an OpenWRT router that DOES run a firewall, which I've spent a bunch of time messing with and customizing to get it working the way I want and put in personalized rules for the various systems. Which my wife and son LOVE ("Dad, the internet's down again!").

When was this questionnaire posted? I didn't see it and get a chance to answer.

Also, I treat servers different to desktops due to different threat models. The server automatically applies security updates and keeps most feature updates sitting for a while for stability, but on desktop I just install everything within a couple of days.

Wtf I'm the only one who waits months to update?

I filled your survey. It would be nice if you could share the results once it's completed.

Question 2 confuses me.

###Do you have automatic update checks enabled on your system?

Yes, with daily checks.

No, automatic updates are disabled.

My system checks daily for updates and notifies me, but doesn't automatically update. Is this "other," or "yes"? Is the "no" option meant to say "automatic update[ check]s are disabled"? Or am I misunderstanding what an update check is?

Some of the stuff I would do if my system was held together by more than literally just hopes and dreams.

Okay, my survey is complete. I posted updated results, with data from 150 responses. The wording on question 2 and 3 might have been too confusing, sorry for that.

I propose asking if the person is primarily using a laptop or a desktop computer. For example: I do use disk encryption and Secure Boot on my laptop, but not on my desktop.

A note: I have entirely automated background updates. I have no idea how often it checks, or how often it updates.

Survey seems broken. JavaScript crutches?