Encryption entails a negligible performance penalty. It definitely is good for your privacy, as long as the password is long enough: somebody stealing your computer will not be able to read your user data (or anything if you go for a full-disk encryption).
Encrypting the user data (what matters the most) is checking one box during
the installation process. Encrypting the whole disk is harder:
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/full-disk-encryption-install
- [Trisquel-users] Disk encryption epicsj30
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