Anyone ever made an encrypted filesystem on Linux? I'm looking for information on how to do it - or a howto or walkthrough would be nice too.

Cryptoloop-HOWTO for kernel 2.6

CryptoFS for Linux Userland Filesystem

EncFS, an encrypted pass-through filesystem which runs in userspace on Linux

Any personal recommendations on any one of those? Which is the best system to use at this point in time? Which is easiest to set up and most effective?
(Just to save me trying them all out myself!)

Saw this Linux.com article linked on NewsForge just now: Encrypting partitions using dm-crypt and the 2.6 series kernel.

From the article: " Back in February of this year, Andrew Morten announced that cryptoloop was being deprecated in favour of dm-crypt. Although the initial announcement caused some consternation, dm-crypt was merged into the stable tree for the 2.6.4 kernel. This article looks at how to set up an encrypted partition using dm-crypt."

As far as trying these out, I do not use the 2.6 kernel, so I haven't tried those. I've only dabbled, so I'm not much help here; you would be better off reading through these articles. If you are on the 2.6 kernel, the dm-crypt kernel module would probably offer the most encryption and security. However, the EncFS userland software may be sufficient for you, and it won't require a kernel recompile.

Now after reading through that Linux.com dm-crypt article, one of the feedback comments states that the SuSE installer includes an option of encrypting partitions. I haven't used SuSE lately, so I can't confirm this, but you might want to try it if you are looking for a relatively painless way to encrypt your drive (YMMV; google to confirm whether SuSE has this option, and if there have been any problems).