I'm about to install Xubuntu 16.04.2 LTS on a Dell Latitude D630 laptop and I'm trying to figure out if full disk encryption is a good idea. I would really like to have encryption, though it's not an absolute necessity. I've seen competing claims as to impact on performance, so trying to gauge what the impact will be on this system (Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 / 1.8 GHz processor, 5400 rpm HDD, 2 GB RAM? (it's listed as 2, or 2 x 1 GB). I mostly just use the computer for writing, general internet access, pretty basic tasks. Will I see a major drop in performance? Less from just home folder encryption? More specifically, are there particular levels of processor/RAM/etc that one should have to make FDE work efficiently?
Disk encryption will lead to a small yet measurable performance decrease since the computer needs to perform an additional step during disk access. However, the bottle neck on a system with specs like yours will almost always be the disk itself and not the processing power required for encryption or decryption.
If you encrypt less data (e. g. only the home directory instead of the whole system) the performance difference will be smaller for obvious reasons. This only applies if you use the same encryption scheme in both instances! The home directory encryption offered by Ubuntu will use eCryptfs as opposed to dm-crypt for full disk encryption. The former is known to be slower than the latter but offers more flexibility (i. e. encrypting only a subset of files on a file system and with different keys, e. g. for different users).
You'll lose all encrypted files if you lose the key or password (e. g. due to forgetfulness, a partial disk failure, or a mistake during repartitioning). Therefore it's very important to back up the key file and keep a note with the password in one or (better yet) more safe places. The key file is not the same as the password and neither can substitute the other. (In fact, the password is used to decrypt the key which is needed to decrypt the data.)
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