Programs to work with
Mozilla/Thunderbird with the ENIGMAIL
Generally Mozilla/Thunderbird with the ENIGMAIL plug-in is the most comprehensive e/mail client I have used -- although MSFT/Outlook, combined with Symantec/PGP Desktop is comparable
note: Thunderbird/ENIGMAIL should be used with GnuPG version 2
if you are not sure what you have then open terminal and issue the --version inquiry, as follows:
Code: Select all
$ gpg2 --version
gpg (GnuPG) 2.0.26
libgcrypt 1.6.3
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Home: ~/.gnupg
Supported algorithms:
Pubkey: RSA, RSA, RSA, ELG, DSA
Cipher: IDEA, 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH,
CAMELLIA128, CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256
Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224
Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB, BZIP2
if it kicks back program not found then install GnuPG2 as follows
Note, do NOT uninstall gnupg. This is still used by many other parts of the operating system, including aptitude itself.
Thunderbird will automatically use gpg2 if you have it installed ( and I think it's required in the current versions )
Thunderbird/ENIGMAIL offers an *excellent* key-management dialog -- numerous example of which are shown as screen image snips in this tutorial. with their key-management dialog you should not need to deal with GnuPG directly or using an alternate edit such as KGpg
Evolution
the Evolution e/mail client is also very well done although you may wish to use the the KGpg key manager with this program.
KGpg
KGpg is a good "GUI" interface to GnuPG although you do need to configure it for gpg2 and for key servers.
command line
a number of examples shown in this sequence have shown command line output
for complete documentation of Command Line options.
GnuPG Reference Manual
Claws Mail
Claws Mail is cool, -- in an interesting way --
they don't like HTML mail -- although they have a plug-in that will display HTML formatted mail for you.
they don't have an HTML editor. At first I thought they were really backward -- but -- on 2d thought -- maybe not. Maybe e/mail should have never been more than a transport service... kinda like the old FIDO system .
CLAWS does allow you to compose in whatever -- and send as attachment
ZIP / tar
Anytime you have a collection of files that need to be signed and sent the best option is to use ZIP or Archive Manager to put all the files into a container -- such as .zip or .tar.gz --etc After that you can sign the .zip or .tar container and then zip or tar your signature together with your archive as .zip or .tar -- whatever you are using -- and this will then give you a single file that can be transmitted/downloaded -- including a signature .