Installing TrueCrypt on x86 or x84 Fedora

Software

TrueCrypt

Because of some licencing issues (that from a pragmatic point of view don't really bother me) TrueCrypt for Linux isn't usually available from package managers unless you add third party repositories. I really hate that word. I prefer installing it manually, and the installer lets me choose where to put it.

The quick way

  1. Go to the TrueCrypt downloads page and choose the Linux install for your system architecture.

  2. Do the usual tar extract, and execute the resulting file much as you would an installer. For example, the latest (at the time of this post) for 64 bit CPUs:

% tar xzvf truecrypt-6.3a-linux-x64.tar.gz
% ./truecrypt-6.3a-setup-x64
  1. Choose option 1 when the installer prompts, then hit [Page Down] a few times and enter "yes" to accept the licence agreement.

  2. Fedora places TrueCrypt in the Accessories groups in Xfce and Gnome, I assume it would for KDE and LXDE too.

The more custom way

If you prefer, in step 3 if you choose option 2, TrueCrypt extracts itself into /tmp so you can place them where you prefer. For example, because of my FreeBSD history I like having resources I install to be run from /usr/local, so once I've extracted them I move them to where I want. Done and done :).

And the best part of all…

Once you have TrueCrypt installed, you can use it to hide whatever you want from overzealous and legally dubious Australian customs officials (Aussie customs can now search laptops)!

Then again, if you're running Fedora or another free/open source operating system I doubt they'd even be able to figure out how to use it let alone perform a constitutionally illegal search.

Then you can use it to hide everything from overzealous legally dubious Australian customs officials.

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