Running Gnu Privacy Assistant in Ubuntu 12.04

Ever since the release of Ubuntu 11.10, GPA (Gnu Privacy Assistant) has been removed from the repository because it crashes in Linux/Ubuntu.

This has held me back from upgrading to the newer version of Ubuntu. As they say necessity is the mother of all invention except that in this case the invention is about finding a work around to this annoying problem. The good news is that the work around is simpler than I thought.

It appears the crash when running the Natty version of GPA is caused by some kind of security issue or restriction. Here is the work around:

1. Download and install a copy of GPA (0.9.0-1).
2. After successful installation, you can run GPA by launching it from the Terminal as follows:

   sudo gpa

This should allow you to operate GPA normally. Just make sure you do not launch it from the Ubuntu launcher.