Integration and portability
How do they fit into the desktop?
You can mount the encrypted volumes using one of the several EncFS frontends. Some like GnomeEncFSManager also have a tray icon and can even automatically mount and unmount encrypted folders on removable devices. KDE users can use the kdeencfs script to mount encfs encrypted folders using password stored in the KDE wallet.
On first use you’ll have to manually select AESCrypt from a list of installed programs in your system. On subsequent use however, most file managers will list it in the right-click context-menu for quicker access. KGpg also integrates in the right-click context menu of KDE’s file manager. There’s also an icon in the system tray that can be used to launch the program’s main window as well as for quickly performing certain actions such as encrypting and decrypting the clipboard contents and launching the editor.
VeraCrypt installs an icon in the taskbar that can be used to launch the program and even mount all encrypted volumes marked as favourite and open any mounted volumes in the file manager. zuluCrypt is currently available for Linux only. However, it can also create and open TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt and Plain volumes. TrueCrypt or VeraCrypt volumes are better alternatives if the encrypted volume is to be shared between Linux, Windows and OS X computers. You can also ask zuluCrypt to tie in with either the Gnome or KDE keyring for quicker access but you can’t drag and drop files into the zuluCrypt interface to encrypt them.