Making an XO more like a regular laptop?

[Bruno Wolff III]

I want to use my XO more like a normal laptop. So far I have switched to 
using gnome instead of sugar.

Is there documentation on how to give a change for an authenticated login 
before one gets logged in as olpc? I have some ideas on how to do this and 
can probably figure it out, but was hoping the process was documented 
somewhere.

Is there a reasonable way to have the XO use encrypted root or at least 
/home? (Worst case I could use an encrypted USB thumb drive for stuff 
I wanted protected.)