Comment 113 for bug 41179

(In reply to Brian Smith (:briansmith), was <email address hidden> (:bsmith) from comment #95)
> Shouldn't the users that care about protecting their passwords be using
> full-disk encryption with a system password already? Why don't we just
> remove the master password mechanism on Linux completely, and rely on users
> use of operating-system-level protection of their whole profile?

Full-disk encryption won't be available to whoever is storing its data on a computer he/she doesn't control. For example you might have to keep your profile on a shared drive when working in an office (alas that's a situation I have been in multiple times) and for those use cases providing a way to encrypt your saved passwords is very important.