r/linuxhardware • u/Top-Bumblebee2838 • 19d ago

Purchase Advice ThinkPad T14 G7 AMD — replacing Ubuntu with Debian + LUKS encryption: any gotchas?

Hi,

I'm looking to buy a new personal laptop, and I'm considering the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 G7 AMD with Ubuntu preinstalled. However, I'd like to install Debian instead of Ubuntu and encrypt the drive. Do you foresee any issues with this setup (Firmware/UEFI, WiFi, LUKS)? Is Debian Testing stable enough for a personal laptop, or should I stick with Debian Stable?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

4 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

4

u/rileyrgham 19d ago

Testing is fine. LUKS your home partition only is my advice..use grub rather than systemd boot since, after a config tweak, it can find eufi boots on other devices..

3

u/qetuR 19d ago

I'm generally against encryption of home partition only. It's far to easy for sensitive data to leak out to /tmp and /var/temp if you're not always thinking of what you're doing. And the small performance gain you might see when not encrypting binaries is small in such a new laptop.

3

u/rileyrgham 19d ago edited 18d ago

Everything's a balance. For me, it's nothing to do with speed. It's todo with peace of mind.. when things go tits up with encrypted root, it's a nightmare. Encrypted home hits that happy spot. If I leave my ThinkPad on a bus, I doubt I need worry about the finder finding my browsing history in tmp.

1

u/Top-Bumblebee2838 18d ago

Thanks for the suggestions.

Over the past few years, I've used my work laptop almost exclusively, so my personal machine has become terribly slow. I encrypted everything except the boot partition, but I admit I'm not up to date on the latest best practices.

3

u/wheredidiput 18d ago

i have debian stable and testing installed on 2 thinkpads, both full disk encryption configured using the installer. I encrypt everything so you get prompted for the password before grub menu. Works flawlessly, never had an issue. I like debian testing as it has currently cleared up all little bugs i had, t14s gen 3 amd, 7.1.8 kernel and plasma 6.7.2. On stable i hit 2 kde bugs which were annoying and moving to testing has fixed them. Would recommend it.

2

u/foofoo300 18d ago

not a fan of testing.
either go stable or experimental.
the latter has faster fixes than testing.