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

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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

Joe wrote:
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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 .

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

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

Ignoramus804 wrote:
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(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....

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

Ignoramus21709 wrote:
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(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

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:36:32 -0600, Ignoramus804 wrote:
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I'm writing this from pan on a Fedora 9 install. Seems rather nice.
Wes

19:31:58 -0500, Joe, snipped-for-privacy@g-sumpin.com wrote:
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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. http://www.slrn.org/ (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. http://pan.rebelbase.com/ (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. http://xpn.altervista.org/index-en.html
Try all three (or more) and see which you like best.
(*) generally, Subject From Date References Message-Id Lines Bytes Xref

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    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.

02:20:57 GMT, DoN. Nichols, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com wrote:
Uh... ok. ;-)
<snip all the good stuff>

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    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:
        <http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/news/slrn
has downloads of pre-compiled slrn for linux for amd64, i386, and powerpc.
    Good Luck,         DoN.

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I use Ubuntu 8.04 and the browser 'Firefox'.
All the Google newsgroups that interest me work fine for me.
Hope this helps.
Lewis.
*****

on Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:26:08 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:
What kind of filtering capability does Google have?

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None other than "not clicking on spam"

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    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.

wrote:
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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

14:40:38 -0500, Joe, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:
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You're running into the MB vs. MiB nomenclature problem.
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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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibytes