Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.

I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.

While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.

After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?

I’m sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 hours ago

    Almost no Linux distro has disk encryption turned on by default (PopOS being the major exception).

    it’s usually an option in the guided disk partition

    If an unencrypted computer is now unacceptable on Android, then it should be on Linux too. No excuses.

    Linux is about choice, not whatever someone else thinks it’s acceptable

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      6 hours ago

      Echoing Jubilant Jaguar’s sentiment about defaults mattering, I think that sometimes an excess amount of choice can be overwhelming such that a user is less empowered to make choices about things they do care about (Leading to a less steep learning curve). Sensible defaults need not remove anyone’s choice