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Check out TrueCrypt for full disk encryption. Not many FDE vendors left after Symantec scoops up these two. FreeOTFE does volume encryption but no boot loader for FDE.

Of course, if you're not stuck on Windows many recent distros support installing on an encrypted root volume. The Ubuntu alternate install CD is one of them.

> The native builtin encryption methods for Linux (like cryptfs), seem to require reformatting the disk
> if you want to do a simple operation like changing the encryption password. Honestly, I don't think there
> are a lot of great solutions out there yet. More work needs to be done in this area! We need better solutions!

If changing the password is your only gripe, use dm-crypt/LUKS. It'll give you ten slots of possible keys (i.e. passwords or external keyfiles), so change to your hearts content without reformatting.
It also takes care of the issue of being able to have an individual user password and a corporate master-pw.

LUKS volumes can even be accessed from Windows with FreeOTFE: http://www.freeotfe.org/

TrueCrypt under Linux requires a kernel module, which doesn't always compile with the latest stable kernel. FreeOTFE http://www.freeotfe.org/ does not require a kernel module, supports LUKS http://luks.endorphin.org/, supports many of the features of TrueCrypt (such as hidden volumes), and is free/libre software that compiles for Windows, Linux and PDA (Windows Mobile 2003/2005 and Windows Mobile 6 platforms).

• General:
  LUKS Integration,
  Overview
• Luks linux automounter:
      cryptsetup (look in your package manager)
• Windows luks tools:
    FreeOTFE
• Ext2 for win:
    fs-Driver

I use LUKS partitions and use FreeOTFE to mount them in windows.

I made my Truecrypt volumes truly cross-platform by installing NTFS support in the kernel. I can take my data drives and move them completely unchanged between my Linux and Windows boxes which is teh awesome.

The NTFS write support in linux is unreliable (I've had it break a partition before); you're better off using ext2 and installing an ext2 driver for windows (though fscking after a crash is a pain). Or, if it's small enough for windows scandisk to work, fat32.

FreeOTFE: A free "on-the-fly" transparent disk encryption program for MS Windows 2000/XP/Vista PCs and Windows Mobile 2003/2005 PDAs Using this software, you can create one or more "virtual disks" on your computer - anything written to these disks is automatically, and securely, encrypted before being stored on your computers hard drive.

Features

        * Source code freely available
        * "Portable mode" included; FreeOTFE doesn't need to be installed before it can be used - making it ideal for carrying your data securely on USB drives!
        * Operates under both PC (MS Windows 2000/XP) and PDA (Windows Mobile 2003/2005) platforms
        * Linux compatibility (Cryptoloop "losetup", dm-crypt and LUKS supported)
        * "Hidden" volumes may be concealed within other FreeOTFE volumes, providing "plausible deniability"
        * FreeOTFE volumes have no "signature" to allow them to be identified as such
        * Encrypted volumes can be either file or partition based.

Transparent on-the-fly full disk encryption:

For Windows: http://www.freeotfe.org/ (based on LUKS)

For Linux: http://luks.endorphin.org/ (LUKS, supported by all major Linux distributions, for any size Linux server/computer/device)

* Cross-platform and well-behaving on-disk standard.

* Free as in both beer and freedom. open sourced.

What more can a government ask for?

Another suggestion might be FreeOTFEhttp://www.freeotfe.org/ which is just about the only encryption product I'm aware of that fully supports both Linux and Windows (no 9x) for creating and opening volumes.

Personally, I prefer Sarah Dean's FreeOTFE. It can mount native Linux crypto-loop encrypted filesystems, so it's far easier to use on the Linux side of things. Fairly easy to use on the Windows side, too. It's not open source, though, as it prohibits charging anyone for it, but I'm not worried because it grants all the permissions I would want.

For the filesystem part of the equation, I've just started using FreeOTFE, which is a real-time encrypted filesystem in a file that works on MS Windows and Linux. You get your choice of hash and encryption algorithms.

So far it has worked perfectly.

FreeOTFE can work with volumes created in linux.

FreeOTFE runs in Windows and is compatible with Linux losetup/dm-crypt volumes. The only Win/Mac cross encryption program I've found is ccrypt which is unfortunately just a simple file encryption program.