@jarkko I don't see why one would avoid LVM when using EXT4. The original post discusses btrfs not needing the volume management, but LVM + LUKS + EXT4/XFS is a fantastically stable system (I know, I use it on dozens of servers every day).
@jarkko I primarily use LVM so I don't need to allocate all my disk space up front, and to give me access to LVM cache. I use xfs for my filesystems so I have xfsdump for consistent backups.
@jarkko I don't like encrypting anything with too much well-known structure in case it becomes an attack vector, so I do the same; disk -> lvm -> luks -> xfs in my case. I tend to not encrypt root filesystems on servers for recovery reasons, and often use "real" partitions for /boot and swap, again to improve recovery options.