USENET Newsgroups

[Carpentr]

Hi everyone,

A little late to the party, but I have recently discovered and been enjoying the text-only newsgroups on USENET. I signed up for a free trial with one of the major providers, but the cost is a little prohibitive considering I only read the text newsgroups such as linux.debian.user, linux.kernel, alt.philosophy, etc and have no need for the binary newsgroups.

Does anyone know of a reputable provider for text-only newsgroups on USENET? I am willing to pay if it is not too expensive.

If anyone has suggestions for a client I would also be grateful. Right now I am using Thunderbird and it works all right. Currently running dual boot of Debian Jessie & OSX.

Hope this is the right place to ask!

~Carpentr

[PaulW2U]

A little late to the party, but I have recently discovered and been enjoying the text-only newsgroups on USENET. I signed up for a free trial with one of the major providers, but the cost is a little prohibitive considering I only read the text newsgroups such as linux.debian.user, linux.kernel, alt.philosophy, etc and have no need for the binary newsgroups.
It's been a while since I've used USENET but most queries I've seen relate to the advice of binary groups.

Does anyone knowof a reputable provider for text-only newsgroups on USENET? I am willing to pay if it is not too expensive.
Does https://groups.google.com offer anything that might be of use to you?

If anyone has suggestions for a client I would also be grateful. Right now I am using Thunderbird and it works all right.
Pan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(newsreader)) was the only newsreader that I used on Linux that I was happy with. slrn (http://slrn.sourceforge.net/), a console based reader was also popular. May be it still is. Both should be available in the Ubuntu repositories.

[Habitual]

Thunderbird (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/creating-newsgroup-account) does nntp

[sonicwind]

It's been at least 12 years since I used USENET. At the time I used Giganews. I see they're still around and offer a 5 GB monthly access plan for $4.99/month. I had no problems with it back then.

Google Groups may meet your needs as someone suggested above.

[Carpentr]

It's been at least 12 years since I used USENET. At the time I used Giganews. I see they're still around and offer a 5 GB monthly access plan for $4.99/month. I had no problems with it back then.


Thanks for the info. $4.99 seems fair to me, as the current plan I'm signed up for starts at $9.99/month. I'll have to check Giganews out.



Does https://groups.google.com offer anything that might be of use to you?


I've tried Google Groups a few times and it is great for a free service. My only complaint is that it is web-access only and does not allow access through a NNTP client.



Pan was the only newsreader that I used on Linux that I was happy with. slrn, a console based reader was also popular. May be it still is. Both should be available in the Ubuntu repositories.


Great suggestion. Pan is available in the Debian repos as well.

Did an apt-get earlier this evening and I am really liking it so far. Simple, yet allows customization. My main problem with many of the other clients was the difficulty to do simple sorts such as by date and author.

Thank you all for your help. After some searching today I have found that the University of Berlin offers access to USENET text-only newsgroups for 10 euros/year. Might give that provider a shot.

Carpentr

[wisjim2]

I've used Pan in the past and find it very customizable.
Try looking into Forteinc.com. They want you to use their Agent browser but Pan works just fine. Just the USNET service starts at $2.95 /mo for 25G of data. You can set it up to auto renew by data amount (if you go over in a month) or by month (if you use less). There are higher levels if you are a heavy user. They do have binary groups available, too. I've used them for years and have had very good service. There is an easy set-up guide that walks you through setting up a reader other than Agent. If you have children or are easily put off you WILL want to filter the groups. Happy Lurking.

[oldos2er]

Back to sleep.