Comment 6 for bug 367163

FWIW, "sudo aptitude pinentry-ncurses;sudo aptitude purge pinentry-gtk2" or simply "sudo update-alternatives --config pinentry" should fix the issue for those with headless installations.

Maybe having gpg-agent depend on "pinentry-ncurses | pinentry-gtk2 | pinentry" would be a better option over the current situation of preferring the gtk2 variant (why not qt?). If you want to argue that case, please open a separate ticket, I suggest.

I agree the change in question had some fallout (and I am a frequent user of headless systems and often annoyed by the lack of consideration for that group) but it's been a conscious choice it seems. Setting to Opinion as resolution.