Reading Usenet News
Information about Usenet
The best source for information about Usenet is the
news.announce.newusers group which
contains introductory postings such as:
The regular postings in the news.answers
newsgroup include the above postings, as well as these others involving Usenet:
Also full of information is the Usenet Information Center.
Information about News reading software
There are a large number of different newsreaders on Usenet and the number
keeps growing. If you are looking for one, you may want to read the
USENET Software: History and Sources
document and the news.software.readers
newsgroup.
rn and trn
One of the first newsreaders was Larry Wall's "readnews", commonly known as
rn. trn adds very useful "thread" following features to
rn. If you've never used trn before, a very good place to start is by
reading Jon Bell's Introduction to Usenet & the
TRN Newsreader and the list of answers to frequently asked questions about trn
More advanced users who are exploring kill files may find it useful to read
this description of Using
killfiles with rn and trn
nn
The nn newsreader has become popular on UNIX platforms with it's
philosophy of "No News is good news." New users may be interested in the
UNLhelp Guide to the NN newsreader
and in the list of
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the NN Newsreader
that is regularly posted to the
news.software.nn newsgroup.
tin
Compared to rn and nn, tin is a relative newcomer. People wanting
to learn how to use it may find help in the
UNLhelp Guide to the TIN newsreader