OSNews

I'm not sure why you were being modded down; your post didn't fall into any of the "bad" categories. You make a valid point, though to be honest whether it's an entire OS or just some files, if you don't encrypt your USB drive you're just asking for personal files to be stolen or lost one day. Which begs the question, is there a way to encrypt this entire OS-on-a-stick without reinstalling from scratch?

With not only all your documents on it, but all your settings, all the programs you use (presumably to access those documents), all your history, everything. Granted, you normally don't have to log in to a USB drive; but then again, you normally can't pick up someone's entire computer and hide it into your pocket either.

But with things like that, it comes down to common sense: Don't leave anything usable against you (login info, site histories, personal notes, etc.) in something someone can pick up and walk away with.

IHMO it'd be nice if on the first boot the user was presented with some short info about information theft and the risks, possibly with a link to a more in-depth explanation of such, and the option of encrypting one's home folder. If you did select to encrypt your files you'd just have to enter a password every time you boot with Mandriva Flash. Power-users or users who don't feel the need to encrypt their files would also be given the opportunity of not encrypting them.

But how difficult would it be to implement such? AFAIK there is no filesystem under Linux which supports encryption of files and folders so it would probably have to be either the entire filesystem or a loopback one..(PS. Someone implement file/folder encryption, please?)