[Article Proposal] Home, sweet systemd-homed

Article Summary: Describe how to configure systemd-homed and migrate user data to external devices.

Article Description: COVID pandemic showed us that there is a need for a generic computing platform shared between users inside their households which has strong guarantee of safety of personal data in both meanings: Privacy and Resiliency. Homed can provide both features by encrypting entire home directories and compartmentalizing them by storing all user data (that includes flatpak user apps) on external devices (e.g. 1TB SD cards). This architecture has the following characteristics:

  • Available storage is no longer a collective problem that has to be managed on a shared computer (say goodbye to home partition), but a personal one which is a function of personal file hygiene and the size of external storage device;
  • Privacy of personal content is not a worry when the user is not logged in thanks to encryption;
  • Privacy of personal content when the user is logged in remains as an issue of personal trust towards computer administrators;
  • Mobility is greatly improved as the entire home directory can be moved between multiple devices;
  • [Future possibility] Linux phones (e.g. pine phone) could present internal SD-card as a storage device to the PC over USB (and charge simultaneously).

+1. Thanks.

+1 from me, @atomic0blimp

I’ve created a Pagure card for article #185 to track the progress of this article.

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Thanks for volunteering to write for the Fedora Magazine

@atomic0blimp have you had an opportunity to Sign in to the Pagure Kanban board using your Fedora Account (for atomic0blimp) ? If you can do that I will assign the Pagure card to you.

Looking forward to your article.

I also would be willing to help in anyway.

@atomic0blimp Have you had an opportunity to Sign in to the Pagure Kanban board? Or to the Fedora Magazine WordPress site? On the WordPress site select the + New link at the top of the page to start creating your article.