GnuPG front ends

[Patton Echols]

On 02/01/2007 12:36 AM, Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:
> Patton Echols wrote:
>
>   
>> It looks like there are a couple of GUI front ends available for
>> GnuPG. Looking at the web sites, It appears that Seahorse is more
>> full featured than GPA, though my needs are fairly small.  I'd expect
>> some level of key manager and I  want to be able to encrypt / sign
>> clipboard contents or point to file, my choice.  Any thoughts about
>> which might be a better choice?
>>     
>
> I've probably tried every front end there is on both Windows and Linux
> boxen. I'm currently using GPA for what little GUI gpg stuff I do. It
> lacks any clipboard functionality, but I have vim scripts for that.
> It's a good, solid kayring manager with Keyserver and file
> encrypt/decrypt support. It also has outstanding support for viewing
> information about keys, sub keys, signatures, and such.
>
> The thing I disliked about Seahorse is its implementation of
> ssh/gpg-agent. On two systems now I've had to manually seek and destroy
> all agent settings because they conflict with the GnuPG "standard" way
> of doing things. I typically have both the stable and development
> branches of GnuPG installed though, and 2.x installs an agent by
> default.
>
> The other front end you may want to look at is Kgpg. It's KDE, but runs
> fine under Gnome complete with the little "task bar" applet that gives
> you left click access just like PGP itself or WinPT. The only thing I
> really had any issues with was it's built in editor. It had little
> quirks like not being able to properly ID signed text unless the
> 'BEGIN' header was the first line on the page. I believe that was true
> for the clipboard function too. You couldn't CTRL+A, CTRL+C to get
> text to the clipboard much of the time, you had to be more selective.
>
> On the plus side, Kgpg can install a pretty "billy goat" icon on your
> desktop that you can drag files to have have them shredded. ;)
>
> DISCLAIMER: Above gripes based on months+ old data. Things may have
> changed, been fixed, etc. 
>
>   
Thanks for your thoughts.  Another day and I've run out of time to do 
anything, but it looks like I'll start by trying GPA.  Even if it's less 
user friendly, it sounds like it may be a better "citizen."  Then if I'm 
dissatisfied, I can try seahorse -- after a backup of course.
>> Also, I'd expect that if I tried GPA, for example.  then uninstalled
>> it and tried seahorse, keyrings etc would be there as soon as
>> installed, both should be looking for the standard GnuPG file
>> locations, right?
>>     
>
> GPA in particular is unobtrusive (another reason I like it). Seahorse
> and Kgpg will diddle your gpg.config and/or other related configuration
> files if you let them. If I remember correctly, Seahorse even installed
> a second set of config files all for itself and went after my .bashrc,
> which only made the problems with agent more perplexing. But none of
> them has ever eaten my keys.
>
>   
Is there a place where I can  find out what files are accessed by 
seahorse - before! - I install it?  It would be good to know what to 
back up.
> You should have backups in any case. And if you do start checking out
> front ends you should definitely back up your configuration files. A
> standard gpg.conf isn't rocket science, but it will make your life
> easier if something changes a setting you later realize you want set
> back or, eliminated.
>
> Bottom line... it's probably going to be a matter of personal
> preference in the end. I'd just go ahead and start with the one
> that looked like it did everything I wanted. And there's really no
> reason you can't have multiple front ends installed if you pay
> attention to how they interact with your .conf files. Especially
> Seahorse. ;)
>
>