How to easily install any GPG GUI on Ubuntu that actually works?

Question

I am trying to install any GnuPG GUI for easy encryption/decryption of text, and I feel like I am in bizarro world where nothing works at all. On Mac OS X, I use GPGTools and it works flawlessly, so I thought it will be similar on Ubuntu, but no such luck so far.

What I tried so far:

• GPA - it just starts, shows no less than 3 error messages on top of each other, and does nothing (doesn't even displays the keys I imported into gpg through bash).
• KGPG - install tons of KDE packages through apt-get, and then it never starts anyway. I managed to get it to start once, but never again.
• Seahorse - finally something that actually starts and shows my keys, but I can't find a way to do anything with them (encrypt or decrypt). Nothing shows up in any Nautilus menu. I have installed gedit-plugins, but nothing like GPG or Seahorse plugin shows up in gedit plugin list.

What are my other options?

(Note: I specifically don't want to use a mail client with GPG supoprt, I just want to encrypt and decrypt text files.)

Answer 1

Besides Seahorse, which is only the key manager, you need a package called seahorse-nautilus to be able to encrypt/decrypt files with Nautilus.

It adds a menu item to the right-click context menu that allows you to encrypt a file directly from the file manager.

Note: This is the package name in Ubuntu 14.04. Other versions may have a different package name.

Additional Note: It may be required to log out of the current session and re-login for everything to work properly after installing the required packages.

Answer 2

I got KGpg to to work.

Downloaded it from Ubuntu Software Center

I found in the reviews section a tweak to make it work, follow instructions here:

http://do-the-right-things.blogspot.com/2012/12/cavaet-in-using-kgpg-in-ubuntu.html

Answer 3

I use Seahorse in combination with plugins for gedit and Nautilus. The easiest way to import keys I've found is to save the public key in a text file with the extension .asc and then double-click on it.

For Nautilus on ubuntu the package is called seahorse-nautilus, this adds an encrypt option when you right-click on a file in the file manager.

For gedit you install the plugin available on this site: https://pietrobattiston.it/gedit-crypto This adds encrypt and decrypt options to the menu in gedit.