Installation gnupg on Windows

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Fri Aug 29 13:12:10 CEST 2008


On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:22, faramir.cl at gmail.com said:

>    Same here... By the way, I still don't understand the benefit from
> GPG2... at first I thought the addition of support of x509 certificates

For example the Pinentry, which will relieve applications from the
cumbersome task of asking the user for a passphrase and caching that
passphrase.  There is also the gpgconf stuff which provides a unified
way of managing configuration files (for example GPA uses this).  Add
well, proper X.509/CMS support.

> but I am not even sure about if GPG2 can generate such certificates...

No gpg can't generate certifciates becuase that is the task of a CA.  It
can however create a key along with a certifciate signing requests.  On
the command line checkout "gpgsm --gen-key"

> but I remember I saw, when the cetificate generation bug in OpenSSL for
> debian machines was discovered, a site said "certificates generated by
> GnuPG are not affected".

Well, we use the term certifciates today for both, X.509 and OpenPGP
becuase they are basically the same: A certificate showng that a key
belongs to a certain entity.

>    For those reasons, if somebody asks if it is hard to install GPG on
> windows, I say "no, install version 1.4.9, it is easy" ;-)

Well, gpg4win is easier to install, you use the light version if you
just need gpg.  The old binary gnupg-1 installer is only maintained for
people who need it on servers etc.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


-- 
Linux-Kongress 2008 + Hamburg + October 7-10 + www.linux-kongress.org

   Die Gedanken sind frei.  Auschnahme regelt ein Bundeschgesetz.




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