Good article over at Linux.com about how to secure your Linux laptop from a physical and data perspective (including hard disk encryption). I usually see a ton of articles about how to secure Windows and Mac laptops but not a lot on Linux. From the article:

"There are three problems with having a computer stolen: the loss of the machine, the loss of the information on it, and the possible security breach if that information includes sensitive information or client data. Each of those problems requires a different approach."

The author talks about several different solutions around whole disk, separate partition, and USB encryption using solutions like dm-crypt and TrueCrypt. I am a personal fan of TrueCrypt and I have been using that to secure my data to a USB drive. There is also some good stuff on laptop tracking solutions for Linux. Don't forget, one of the best deterrents...is to use a cable lock..yes, a cable lock can easily be cut but as a deterrent to physical theft it works pretty well.

So I have been tinkering around with Gentoo Linux and have been trying to get it up and running on a Dell D620. My first mistake was using genkernel instead of manually configuring the kernel (as recommended by Gentoo). Genkernel seems to install all kinds of extra stuff that you don't need. My problem is that xorg won't configure properly...looks like a kernel issue with the Intel 945g video. I have followed these instructions in the Gentoo Wiki and still can't get X to work properly. I am going to try and reinstall with a manual kernel configuration. In the meantime, if you have a D620 and running Gentoo please post any suggestions in the forum. :)

Here is a good article on how to manage your shell history. For those of you that don't know, all the commands that you enter into a Bash shell (default shell on many Linux distros) are stored in a history file. This is to allow a user to use previous executed commands. The problem with this is that an attacker could easily compromise this history file and get all kinds of good data if they were able to own your machine. With these tips you can limit the size and behaviour of this file or remove the history on logout.

Shell game: Managing Bash command history