Re: Doesn't Linux have a decent usenet reader?

Agent86 said...

I was a Gravity user also, from when it was -Anawave- Gravity, then got
the discounted license when the development went to Microplanet (who
were guys from Anawave anyway, IIRC). I liked it for great text
handling and light-to-medium binary downloading - never could get into
Free Agent enough to want to upgrade to Agent.

Same here, but I gave Agent a spin. It didn't last long, though. I was
reminded of this when they recently emailed me with an offer for the
Agent v3 update. I gave that a spin, but it's still a cranky old beast.

When my usage balance shifted to heavier binary usage, I tried NewsBin
for a while because Gravity would often choke on the mega-header
groups.

I finally found a home with Xnews, since it was relatively
speedy and saved partial binaries in a format acceptable to par/par2 -
the recent (for Xnews) update in 2005 helped with stability. So it runs
decently on my Celeron 333/Win 98SE combo, which is more or less a
dedicated Usenet machine.

I tried BNR. It's cranky and buggy, but fast and does the job.

But now I'm dual-booting with Xubuntu Dapper on this machine, and I'd
like to find a good Linux Usenet app suitable for heavy binary usage -
yes I know Xnews runs under Wine, but I don't want to run Wine at all,
and it might be too much for the poor Celery 333's heart anyway.

I want to avoid Gnome or KDE dependencies, because I need to keep
things as light as possible on the old creaky warhorse, so Pan is out.
So is there a good GTK/GTK2 based Usenet app that won't choke on the
mega-header groups?

KLibido seems to be the binary tool recommended. I don't do much binary
downloading, so I can't vouch for it under load. I'm following the Pan
list, and it seems that they have concentrated efforts on it as a binary
download tool, which is a shame, because it had the potential to be a
decent text news' reader - something it falls woefully short of
currently, imo. My understanding, however, is that Pan is single
threaded, which, if correct, will limit its throughput.

My solution is to run Windows under VMware! I guess this is less
desirable for you than using Wine, though.

--
Best,
Marc


--
ubuntu-users mailing list
ubuntu-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Bird Flu? What do we care?
    ... I still prefer agent for most things, and it will run ok under wine on ... If you're using Wine ... and will then use pan for usenet on that too. ... sophisticated filtering built-in - or let you pull in a regex. ...
    (uk.business.agriculture)
  • Re: Bird Flu? What do we care?
    ... I still prefer agent for most things, and it will run ok under wine on ... If you're using Wine ... When I post to usenet with agent I ... and will then use pan for usenet on that too. ...
    (uk.business.agriculture)
  • Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?
    ... >> couple of flaws that I can't live with. ... I came from Agent via Wine, and then used Pan for years, but eventually went ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Running windows programs in wine
    ... > Forget Wine use native app's. ... I like Agent over Pan, because Pan is NOT an offline newsreader, and not ... I'd like Knode but that's even less of an offline newsreader than Pan... ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?
    ... problem, since you rarely reincarnate one, and Pan allows you to switch ... In Gravity you ... permanent articles periodically, and either use the information, mark ... suspect that the progs include their favourite features and missed the ...
    (Debian-User)