Re: Thunderbird replacement suggestions?
On 7/4/20 16:43, Weaver wrote:
> On 05-07-2020 07:38, Tom Dial wrote:
>> Greetings.
>>
>> While trying to fix a broken Thunderbird/Enigmail installation on my
>> wife's Windows laptop, I found the cause to be a new feature in
>> Thunderbird 78, installed recently without notice: that it will not
>> support Enigmail. The new version also appears to have no obvious way to
>> import openpgp keys, and it appears the developers do not plan to
>> support that, at least for secret and signed public keys, nor any
>> intention to adhere to the "Web of Trust" infrastructure. I still have
>> TB 68 on the Debian machines, but expect that will go away by Bullseye
>> release, since Mozilla's support for it apparently will end late this year.
>
> Interesting!
> I'm using 68.9.0 (64 bit) Thunderbird on SID and all those features work
> just fine, for now.
> Enigmail _is_ going, but will be replaced by OpenPGP, and S/MIME has
> always been available, and will continue to be.
I also am presently using 68.9.0 (on Buster) without issues. Windows 10
with current patches, a harbinger of things to come, is a rather
different matter; it now has Thunderbird 78, which fails with Enigmail.
>From what I could find - almost none of it younger than nine months,
Thunderbird is supposed to honor the OpenPGP protocol, (re)implemented
internally, with its own repository. It appears it will not provide for
import of public keys and that there are no plans to add that, and no
more than a hint of possible consideration of using public key servers.
It offers, in its current version, to accept instead a "certificate,"
presumably X.509, which I do not have or wish to obtain.
This seems to me a good deal short of replacing anything but the
cryptographic core and that, maybe, newly developed. It may happen that
the developers will remedy these defects, but that is at best a future goal.
Regards,
Tom Dial
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