Tweaking Pop!_OS
Linux, and Pop!_OS in particular, can do a lot for your lapto p’s performance and security with just a little persuasion…
Pop!_OS is one of few distributions to offer out-of-the-box support for full disk encryption. This is something that’s more relevant for laptop users because there’s a higher risk of theft. And without some kind of encryption, if your laptop does get purloined then the thief has access to all your files. They don’t need your password. Only to remove the drive and plug it into a different machine.
Other distros have support for home directory encryption (via EcryptFS), but this has its limitations. The home directory is meant to be relocked when you log out, but if something goes wrong and this doesn’t happen (and there have been bugs that cause exactly this behaviour), then a determined attacker could gain access if the laptop was left in standby mode. Then there’s the question of sensitive data stored outside of the home directory. All kinds of data ends up in temporary files, printer spools and system logs, so if you’re working with sensitive data then you should look at full disk encryption. It’s worth noting that there are ways and means to set up both kinds of encryption on any distro, but in general it’s not for the faint of heart.
Full disk encryption is exactly that. It works on the whole drive – not some directories, not a selection of partitions, the whole shebang. Pop will only give you the option to enable it if you choose the ‘Erase everything and install’ option. Otherwise, any operating systems already installed on the drive would break, since they wouldn’t be able to find their root filesystems.