How many times have you wanted to keep your files safe and away from the eyes of intruders?
If you are running KDE desktop then you’re already in luck because of the nifty tool with which you can keep your files safely encrypted and away from the reach of whoever you want. Introducing Plasma Vault – a go-to encryption solution for the KDE desktop.
Plasma Vault is an open-source encryption solution for KDE Neon with which you can create encrypted folders to contain private files of any format.
How is the encryption that Plasma Vault provides different from that of the default encryption that Ubuntu (for example,) lets you perform on your Home folder? Ivan Čukić, the developer explains:
[An encrypted home folder does] not cover the possibility that someone might access your system while it is running. Plasma Vaults fill this void by making the attack surface smaller – instead of having all data unlocked at once, you can do it piece by piece – it is more granular.
What’s even better is that you can run Plasma Vault on top your encrypted Linux Home folder; doubling your workstation’s security.
Features in Plasma Vault
- FOSS – free, and open-source
- Integrated with KDE desktop
- Intuitive and customizable UI
As I hinted earlier, if you are running KDE desktop then you don’t need to bother yourself with installation steps because you have it running natively already. As for how well it runs, well, its work process is pretty straight-forward. It inherits KDE’s beautiful minimal design with a themeable and intuitive GUI.
If you happen to be using Plasma Vault feel free to let us know about your experience and if you haven’t tried it yet then perhaps you should give it a try.
Remember your questions and suggestions are always welcome.
This may be really, really dumb (or I’m having a fantastic senior moment). But how does one invoke plasma vault???
I installed it without incident or difficulty and expected to be able to call it up via krunner or from the apps launcher. But it’s not there.
On reflection, I thought it might be a new property or action accessible by right-clicking on a folder. Nope, apparently not.
I’m running the latest version of KDE available from the repos for Fedora 27. Any info is appreciated
Hi Joe,
I’m glad that you asked. Please, no matter how dumb you feel the question might be always feel free to ask.
Once Plasma Vault is installed on your workstation you should see a black lock icon appear on the bottom panel of your KDE Plasma along with Net, Battery, and Volume indicators. If you can’t see it there then you might need to add it yourself by adding a new Plasma Widget.
Let me refer you to this video as it might be of help -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vxlIXnuVuM
Sweet sweet.
Indeed! hehe
The article should state that this won’t be released until Plasma 5.11. For now it’s available for testing in Neon Developer Edition. Looking forward to using this once released.
True. I should have mentioned it’s for testers.