Re: [PLUG] Configuring Mutt or another email program

[Bill Jonas <bill@billjonas.com>]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 11:12:33PM -0400, John Beck wrote:
> You're right -using Netscape would definitely be much easier for me to set up
> / use.  My only questions is, can GnuPg/PgP still be used with Netscape?  I
> just downloaded and installed the GnuPg program this afternoon, and sent
> Darxus my key and he was able to post it the keyserver for me.  Was that all
> in vain?  :-)  Please excuse the ignorance if its blatently obvious, but I am
> still learning as I go with most of this stuff, including the GnuPg program!

You can still use them together, but Netscape doesn't support it.  You'd
have to do everything manually, which would be a real pain.

Mutt has an excellent gpg/pgp infrastructure in place.  If you'd like, I
can mail Debian's /etc/Muttrc to you; it has the proper commands already
set up.

Another note: mutt has IMAP support builtin, but in keeping with the
Unix philosophy (of each program doing one thing and doing it extremely
well instead of monolithic programs that do many things, but not
necessarily well), it doesn't do POP or SMTP.  Setting up an MTA can be
an adventure in and of itself, but I hear that fetchmail is pretty
straightforward to set up.

One example of the power of mutt+gpg:  Mutt will automatically call gpg
to verify signed mail.  And if you have a "keyservers" line in your
GnuPG config file (~/.gnupg/options), gpg will go fetch the key for you
if you don't have the person's public key already (and assuming that the
key is on the keyserver).  Another:  You can have all your outgoing
messages signed automatically, and they can be encrypted with just a
couple of keystrokes.  Sure beats copying, pasting, manually running
gpg, more copying, pasting, etc...

Lots of docs are available on http://www.mutt.org/ or in the mutt
directory wherever your documentation is kept on your system.

-- 
Bill Jonas    *    bill@billjonas.com    *    http://www.billjonas.com/
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,  we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously."          -- Benjamin Franklin


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