Feature Request: Disable/Hide the encryption of the home folder (ecryptfs)

[Jean28518]

Hello everyone,

My proposal is to remove the option to encrypt the home folder for the following reasons:

• The ecryptfs recovery process is very tedious, and the "easy" command ecryptfs-recover-private does not work in many environments.
• Ecryptfs is considered deprecated and unsafe by many users, as described here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230403134432.46726-1-frank.li@vivo.com/T/
• Files inside the home folder with ecryptfs have messed-up creation and modification dates.
• This function could be especially distracting for first-time users. They might not be aware of the issues that could arise later.
• We have another encryption method inside the installer for the whole system (LUKS with LVM). Perhaps we should highlight this more, but that is a separate issue.
• Ecryptfs would only be graphically available for the first user, which is inconsistent.

It is yet to be decided whether we should just hide this option or, for example, disable it by default and only enable it with a specific terminal command.

What do you think about this?
Please let me know.

[firefighterlp8]

I think its very old and nobody needs it. Its just bad for noobs on Mint

[andrewille]

Two more reasons for it:

• Ecryptfs has more overhead and performs worse than LUKS
• It comes with limitations, e.g. file name length limit is only ~143 characters

[caplod]

I think its very old and nobody needs it. Its just bad for noobs on Mint

This is the way.