[65a]

> I certainly want to get rid of gpg from my life if I can

I see this sentiment a lot, but you later hint at the problem. Any "replacement" needs to solve for secure key distribution. Signing isn't hard, you can use a lot of different things other than gpg to sign something with a key securely. If that part of gpg is broken, it's a bug, it can/should be fixed.

The real challenge is distributing the key so someone else can verify the signature, and almost every way to do that is fundamentally flawed, introduces a risk of operational errors or is annoying (web of trust, trust on first use, central authority, in-person, etc). I'm not convinced the right answer here is "invent a new one and the ecosystem around it".

[akerl_]

It's not like GPG solves for secure key distribution. GPG keyservers are a mess, and you can't trust their contents anyways unless you have an out of band way to validate the public key. Basically nobody is using web-of-trust for this in the way that GPG envisioned.

This is why basically every modern usage of GPG either doesn't rely on key distribution (because you already know what key you want to trust via a pre-established channel) or devolves to the other party serving up their pubkey over HTTPS on their website.

[65a]

Yes, not saying that web of trust ever worked. "Pre-established channel" are the other mechanisms I mentioned, like a central authority (https) or TOFU (just trust the first key you get). All of these have some issues, that any alternative must also solve for.

[woodruffw]

A lot of people are using PGP for things that don’t require any kind of key distribution. If you’re just using it to encrypt files (even between pointwise parties), you can probably just switch to age.

(We’re also long past the point where key distribution has been a significant component of the PGP ecosystem. The PGP web of trust and original key servers have been dead and buried for years.)

[kaoD]

This is not the first time I see "secure key distribution" mentioned in HN+(GPG alternatives) context and I'm a bit puzzled.

What do you mean? Web of Trust? Keyservers? A combination of both? Under what use case?

[kpil]

I'm assuming they mean the old way of signing each others signatures.

As a practical implementation of "six degrees of Kevin Bacon", you could get an organic trust chain to random people.

Or at least, more realistically, to few nerds. I think I signed 3-4 peoples signatures.

The process had - as they say - a low WAF.

[65a]

In a signature context, you probably want someone else to know that "you" signed it (I can think of other cases, but that's the usual one). The way to do that requires them to know that the key which signed the data belongs to you. My only point is that this is actually the hard part, which any "replacement" crypto system needs to solve for, and that solving that is hard (none of the methods are particularly good).