I would say any sanely written application would fall back to doing the requested operations in userspace if it cannot use the AF_ALG socket.
It could fail though. But I have not yet heard of anyone noticing big problems due to disabling the problematic modules. And I have not noticed any such issues on our systems at ${DAYJOB}.
IMHO, since these parts of the Linux kernel are so crappy I personally would say disabling them is a good default choice. YMMV. But if you encounter problems, then you can always re-enable the modules. (Preferably after upgrading your kernel, obviously.)
check if module is loaded. if it isn't nothing is using it and you can safely add it. I'd also imagine most software doesn't fail but just use userspace lib
It could fail though. But I have not yet heard of anyone noticing big problems due to disabling the problematic modules. And I have not noticed any such issues on our systems at ${DAYJOB}.
IMHO, since these parts of the Linux kernel are so crappy I personally would say disabling them is a good default choice. YMMV. But if you encounter problems, then you can always re-enable the modules. (Preferably after upgrading your kernel, obviously.)