OT - Newsgroup Reader For Linux

Well, I've about had it with Gates & Co.. One corrupted file (HDD driver - nvata.sys) locked down my PC, and the "repair" feature on my install disc won't do anything but give me a DOS prompt. (What's with that?)

Off I went to the ol' laptop.

So, I downloaded Ubuntu, and am gonna try my hand at a dual-boot system for a while (assuming I can get Windows to restore).

I like Agent as a newsreader; what is a good one to use with Linux? I need filtering capabilities, etc, and don't want to jump into a highly technical enterprise at the outset.

TIA, Joe

Reply to
Joe
Loading thread data ...

16 bit Agent and WINE? :)

tin is the usual choice.

IIRC, tin wants to download all headers each time you fire it up.

I have leafnode running on my box to act as my personal usenet server so it isn't that bad since there is a local cache of messages to load.

I really like Agent a lot more as you can see from the headers.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Mozilla Firefox works very well , and IIRC is included with Ubuntu . Going for 08-04 or 08-10 ? This year's versions of Ubuntu can be installed from within Windows , with some minor loss of function - hibernation won't be accessible , for instance . I'd rather have it installed alongside rather than inside , so you don't have to depend on a Windows boot to get to Ubuntu .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

What I meant to write was "mozilla THUNDERBIRD is a good newsreader - Firefox is the web browser .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Pan is a very easy newsreader. I believe that Thunderbird may do newsgroups. I use slrn.

Reply to
Ignoramus804

Yup, another vote for thunderbird. I've been using Linux for general computing/internet stuff since about 2002. When the newsreader function split off from mozilla, I resisted for a while, but am now using thunderbird.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I like and use slrn. It can filter on ANY header if necessary. It has the capability to be used as a pointy clicky, but it's essentially a text-reader.

formatting link
(has excellent documentation) Pan can filter on any of the XOVER headers(*), (which is pretty much all that ever IS necesary) and from what I hear, is somewhat similar to Agent. (I saw Agent once when I ran it under Wine... guess why I never ran it a second time... ;-) and Pan is a pointy-clicky, and can do binary groups.
formatting link
(disappointing documentation)

I hear XPN is good, though I've only looked at it once. Also a pointy-clicky, and I'm pretty sure it does binaries too.

formatting link
Try all three (or more) and see which you like best.

(*) generally, Subject From Date References Message-Id Lines Bytes Xref

Reply to
Steve Ackman

Well ... what I use is slrn. It came pre-compiled on Sun's Solaris (in the "Software Companion" CD), so it is very likely to be available for linux as well. If not, you can compile it, but you probably don't want to do that this soon after moving to linux.

Looks as though a quick Google search of:

slrn linux ubuntu

has lots of hits, and the first three look like a good starting point.

This one:

has downloads of pre-compiled slrn for linux for amd64, i386, and powerpc.

Good Luck, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

(snip)

I was using pan (very much like agent) 'till Comcast shut down newsgroups and it had issues with Motzarella.

So I removed Pan and am using Thunderbird for now, I figured I would re-install Pan from the get-go later and see if it could be configured correctly.

Just haven't got around to it....

Reply to
matthew maguire

I use Ubuntu 8.04 and the browser 'Firefox'.

All the Google newsgroups that interest me work fine for me.

Hope this helps.

Lewis.

*****
Reply to
limeylew

Pan should be a part of your distribution, should be easy to install.

Reply to
Ignoramus21709

What kind of filtering capability does Google have?

Reply to
Steve Ackman

(snip)

It was in the repo and worked until I changed servers. It wouldn't allow me to change all the needed things for motzarella. Some of the menu items had been removed, perhaps by the PCLinux guys.

So I'll re-install sometime (you set all parameters the first time pan runs)...

Matt

Reply to
matthew maguire

Thanks for all the replies so far. I used to use Tbird as a ng reader, but switched to Agent 'cause I liked the better filtering capabilities (among other things); several of the ng's I read have become infested lately, and I don't have the patience to wade through the crap to get to the meat.

I downloaded 8.10 - planned on copying it to a CDROM, but it shows as being 716MB, so I don't know if it will fit on a (supposedly) 700 Meg disc. Maybe from a thumb drive? I got nuthin that'll burn a DVD, except the PC that won't boot.

Anybody tried booting from an external hard drive? Maybe that is the route I should try for starters.

Joe

Reply to
Joe

None other than "not clicking on spam"

Reply to
Maxwell Lol

I'm writing this from pan on a Fedora 9 install. Seems rather nice.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

You're running into the MB vs. MiB nomenclature problem.

Same *.iso listed two different ways:

$ ls -l

728221696 Aug 20 11:41 ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso

$ ls -lh

694M Aug 20 11:41 ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso

Just burn it to a CD. It fits... as long as it's smaller than ~734,000,000 bytes (the size of a 700 MiB CD)

For more clarification on why a MB can be 1024² or

1000² bytes depending on context, see
formatting link
Reply to
Steve Ackman

[ ... ]

Aside from these, slrn can filter on other headers, the most useful from my point of view is the "NNTP-Posting-Host: " header, which can be used with RE style wild cards to block based on where the originating system is (not the actual news server, but where the individual poster's net connection is. This is particularly useful for blocking the frequent spams offering footwear and such from China, various strange spams from India, and various other places which don't seem to include anything meaningful.

And when you filter on "Subject: " "From: " and the others, you can specify how long (in days) to keep the filter active -- or you can specify a specific cutoff date. Had I thought of it, I would have set a bunch of "Subject: " headers to expire one day after the election. :-)

And for the ones who start out marking the Subject as off topic by putting "OT: " at the beginning, I simply edit those from whatever is originally saved to:

Subject: .* Whatever the rest of the subject line is

to keep the automatic conversion of "OT: " to "Re: " by OE from cancelling my filtering.

Blocking on a large IP block is a bit more tricky, requiring a pretty good understanding of REs. (Regular Expressions -- wildcarding on steroids.)

You can also set up any given filtering to work only in the current newsgroup, or in all newsgroups. Both are useful for different things.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols
[ ... ]

Are you considering this to be a "Google newsgroup"? It isn't. It is a *usenet* newsgroup, which Google is mirroring and archiving.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Not much to choose from, but here are the major players.....

formatting link

Reply to
Gene

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.