Yes, using Linux can be frustrating, but it is still infinitely superior to windows. Yes, it is also a crown of thorns! But still superior.The more you use it, the more you'll see that this is the case. When your knowledge broadens, so does the power at your disposal. It's work, but it's usually worth it. This is not the case with Windows, which is a system I swear to God found the finest Soviet bureaucrats and central planners and put them to work, with Windows Vista and 7 being examples of the latter's experiences with Alzheimers. I can see Linux recovering from its flaws and evolving, but I can't say the same about Microsoft or Apple's products.So. Think of using Linux as a long term investment, in the end it'll reward you. Walled Gardens (the development model for newbies) is comforting, but it lulls you into accepting inadequate products. An expert linux user, is quite literally a decade ahead of everybody else in terms of technological sophistication , that counts for a lot. Believe me, it's no joke.Setting up your affairs on the Silk Road isn't user friendly or easy for the average person either, but there are reasons for those decisions. Feel free to purchase a Tux penguin and wring its neck occasionally though, great stress reliever... :DSome answers to your questions:1. If you search "remove communism", there's a thread explaining how to remove the Commie splash screen (better dead than red! ;-) ), John Keats has a tutorial on it in Paste Bin. It involves editing one or two text files on your usb, it's quite easy to do. However, I doubt it'll solve your hanging problem.2. Ensure your USB port and your USB drive are both USB 2.0. This has often resolved problems like hanging for me.3. Liberte's encryption is 8192 bit. For comparison, military grade encryption is 256 bit. It is also the largest key length possible with the majority of encryption software, so it is good for about a 100 years or so at least. Short of quantum computing, ha ha, but if that is setup, there'll be much bigger problems for the government than cracking your stuff.4. With wiping a HD, you want to delete everything on it, and then run a program which will overwrite the entire HD with a single pass. Multiple passes, experts advise, are largely a waste of time, but you can do more if you want to, but it's effect will largely be psychosomatic than physical.5. I don't think there's much security afforded by a BIOS password. I believe the BIOS is in EEPROM memory, so you could just reset the BIOS manually by exposing the BIOS chip on the motherboard to light. I think this is correct, but I'm not 100% sure. So yeah, not a whole lot of security afforded there. 6. I would, with regard to encrypted containers, keep two kinds of data. Most data is large e.g. pdfs etc, but some data is small, a few spreadsheets, some text files etc. The real incriminating evidence is the spreadsheets, your record keeping. Other research stuff isn't illegal to have, it's just freely available information that seems suspicious to be in one place. So, use truecrypt for most data, but use truecrypt and then use steganographic techniques with your records. This means your spreadsheets are not only encrypted, but disguised as pictures or as a tiny segment of a video file. Steganography, is LE's worst nightmare, it ought to be used more often I feel. (you could say you're going real world steganography with your 'rock', ha ha).