Debian is my favorite distro, but I usually don’t recommend it as a desktop environment. LMDE is a nice alternative for Debian fans who want to use Debian as their everyday home/work desktop environment. Unlike Ubuntu, it’s a pure Debian installation (basically Debian Testing), but it uses a more agile and up to date package repository. Many software packages which are known to be a hassle on Debian desktops run seamlessly out of the box. Who hasn’t cried out “Come on Debian, who needs Iceweasel. I want the latest version of Firefox with Flash running”. LMDE goes a little bit along the line “I like to have my cake and eat it too”.
One thing that bothered me tough, is that the LMDE installer didn’t offer any options to encrypt the partition(s). I found a howto by hashstat Howto install LMDE with LVM (with or without encryption). However I didn’t like the idea of transforming the Live CD into the final system.
The main part of the solution I describe here is heavily based on hashstat howto. However, we install LMDE onto a virtual machine and then transfer it onto the encrypted partition. There are three steps:
- Install LMDE on a VirtualBox VM
- Prepare encrypted disk
- Transfer LMDE from the virtual machine to the real machine
In my case, I installed LMDE on a virtual machine on my notebook. If you don’t have an extra computer, it might also be possible to install LMDE on a flash drive and use it later to transfer it to your real machine. However I didn’t try that. The virtual machine method was fitting for me, since I had LMDE already installed on it for a test drive.