Show HN: The GPG Guide – Practical OpenPGP for 2026

[tgies]

Most GPG documentation I could find was outdated -- O'Reilly 1995, No Starch 2006, countless websites from the mid 00s -- or scattered across dozens of blog posts that each covered one piece. I wanted a single reference that covered the full workflow with current tools and practices, so I had been keeping a bunch of text files in my homedir for a while. Recently I realized it was getting close to 60k words and I decided I should share it.

The guide covers GnuPG 2.5.x and Sequoia sq, defaults to Ed25519, and has three reader tracks: a minimal Git + SSH setup, a full YubiKey identity, and a high-assurance path for FOSS package maintainers and the like. 377 pages across 16 parts, with platform-specific instructions for Linux, macOS, and WSL.

Parts I–III are available as a sample download. I'd be really grateful for any feedback, as I have never written a book before and, frankly, have no business doing it.

[sigwinch]

Thanks for doing this. Looks like it matches PGP but not GnuPG when searching leanpub. Don’t know if you can control that.

[tgies]

Thanks! I'll see what I can do about that.