what news / mail readers

Adam · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 99

Happy with Kontact, used it for years. But am very
tempted to try an alternative newsreader, as a trend
towards command-line apps, to further my Linux
familiarity/knowledge.

So what news-readers or mail-readers do we use, and
can wholeheartedly recommend ?
Non-gui, command-line preferred.

Perhaps Emacs' Gnus and Rmail are the final destination.
Do BOTH these have a big enthusiastic following ?
I realize both these are effectively wrappers and don't
really fit the command-line prescription. But recommended ?

Elsewhere in this group, a helpful contributor mentioned
"..real news tools like nn, pan, slrn, tin [..] xrn "
which raises the issue of basic, native, initial or
primary tools for Unix/Linux. I mention this because
a transparent quality would be helpful in interrogating
or providing some assistance to my troublesome ISP.
And where best to start is really what I am asking.

There's much on TLDP re mail/news which I am perusing,
so this query is more of an informal survey. Thanks.

Any preferences, suggestions or comments welcome.

Blinky the Shark · External Since: Sep 11, 2004 Posts: 286

Adam wrote:
> Happy with Kontact, used it for years. But am very
> tempted to try an alternative newsreader, as a trend
> towards command-line apps, to further my Linux
> familiarity/knowledge.
>
> So what news-readers or mail-readers do we use, and
> can wholeheartedly recommend ?
> Non-gui, command-line preferred.
>
> Perhaps Emacs' Gnus and Rmail are the final destination.
> Do BOTH these have a big enthusiastic following ?
> I realize both these are effectively wrappers and don't
> really fit the command-line prescription. But recommended ?
>
> Elsewhere in this group, a helpful contributor mentioned
> "..real news tools like nn, pan, slrn, tin [..] xrn "
> which raises the issue of basic, native, initial or
> primary tools for Unix/Linux. I mention this because
> a transparent quality would be helpful in interrogating
> or providing some assistance to my troublesome ISP.
> And where best to start is really what I am asking.
>
> There's much on TLDP re mail/news which I am perusing,
> so this query is more of an informal survey. Thanks.
>
> Any preferences, suggestions or comments welcome.

slrn

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Scott B. · External Since: Mar 26, 2004 Posts: 92

Adam wrote:
> So what news-readers or mail-readers do we use, and
> can wholeheartedly recommend ?
> Non-gui, command-line preferred.

I like slrn for Usenet

http://slrn.sourceforge.net/

and mutt for email

http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk/

Dan Espen · External Since: Jan 16, 2006 Posts: 495

Adam <nospam.TakeThisOut@example.com> writes:

> Happy with Kontact, used it for years. But am very
> tempted to try an alternative newsreader, as a trend
> towards command-line apps, to further my Linux
> familiarity/knowledge.
>
> So what news-readers or mail-readers do we use, and
> can wholeheartedly recommend ?
> Non-gui, command-line preferred.
>
> Perhaps Emacs' Gnus and Rmail are the final destination.
> Do BOTH these have a big enthusiastic following ?

If you use Gnus, use it for both mail and news.
Works great for both.

At work I got started with MH-E have haven't switched
to Gnus. Actually I find MH-E a bit more comfortable
but I don't do mail filtering into multiple inboxes.
If I did I'd dump MH-E for Gnus.

My impression of Rmail is that it's on it's way out.
There is also VM under emacs.

If you're an Emacs addict (like me) they Gnus
is the way to go for news.

Adam · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 99

Interesting. And impressive its all quite slrn so far.
Not a mention of Gnus gnowhere. Perhaps early days.

Ads.

Blinky the Shark · External Since: Sep 11, 2004 Posts: 286

Whiskers wrote:
> On 2007-06-29, Adam <nospam.RemoveThis@example.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Any preferences, suggestions or comments welcome.
>
> For usenet: slrn.
>
> I prefer Kmail for email; it can be run on its own, without all the
> 'Kontact' stuff, if you only want the email functions. But it is a
> graphical application.

I mentioned slrn. Since you've broken the ice with a graphical email
suggestion, I'll second it: Kmail for mail.

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Moe Trin · External Since: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 1700

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandrake, in article
<f61kjn$vmo$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Adam wrote:

>But am very tempted to try an alternative newsreader, as a trend
>towards command-line apps, to further my Linux familiarity/knowledge.
>
>So what news-readers or mail-readers do we use

[compton ~]$ whatis mail slrn
mail (1) - send and receive mail
slrn (1) - An easy to use NNTP based newsreader
[compton ~]$

>Non-gui, command-line preferred.

Is there another kind?

>Perhaps Emacs' Gnus and Rmail are the final destination.

"Emacs is a great OS. The only thing it lacks is a decent editor."

>Elsewhere in this group, a helpful contributor mentioned
>"..real news tools like nn, pan, slrn, tin [..] xrn "
>which raises the issue of basic, native, initial or
>primary tools for Unix/Linux.

Don't forget rn, or if you like the idea of article threading, 'trn'

>And where best to start is really what I am asking.

The Queen said "Start at the beginning" (and continued "go to the end,
and then stop" - but that's pushing things a bit.

News readers, like mail tools, editors and browsers, are a personal
choice. I'm using the original Berkeley 'mail' which is about as crude
a mail tool as exists, because it does what I need. If I have to, I can
use others, but why should I change? Wink

Old guy

Adam · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 99

> If you're an Emacs addict (like me) they Gnus
> is the way to go for news.

Does make sense, as we're spending more time
in Emacs for various things. Still fascinated
by the mail/news provenance - so I'll stick
with TLDP for now. And slrn - wow.

Some threads, like
Statistics for alt.os.linux.mandrake
of the 19th May below, are just no fun when the
stepped list of the GUI runs out of horizontal
real estate.
Not my reason for considering the change, more a
contributing factor.

Ron Gibson · External Since: Apr 28, 2004 Posts: 1359

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:56:06 +1200, Adam wrote:

>> If you're an Emacs addict (like me) they Gnus is the way to go for news.

> Does make sense, as we're spending more time in Emacs for various things.
> Still fascinated by the mail/news provenance - so I'll stick with TLDP for
> now. And slrn - wow.

Some time back I was using pine in combination with jed for NG's. Worked
pretty good but it takes a bit of time to set up.

--
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Email - rsgibson DeleteThis @verizon.borg
Replace borg with net

Adam · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 99

Moe Trin wrote:

[ .. ]

> "Emacs is a great OS. The only thing it lacks is a decent editor."

> The Queen said "Start at the beginning" (and continued "go to the end,
> and then stop" - but that's pushing things a bit).

From an interview with a great Turkish-American artist;

- What is your starting point when you want to give your
creative output a tangible form?
- Simply to start, then continue, and finally conclude.

OT: By golly those RFCs make compelling browsing.

Thanks. Ads.

Moe Trin · External Since: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 1700

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandrake, in article
<f658ft$fp7$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Adam wrote:

>OT: By golly those RFCs make compelling browsing.

Well, there _are_ a lot of them, and they are trying to make things
inter-operable on the net. Just trying to keep up to date on them can
be a full time job. In addition to the 4869 existing RFCs

[compton ~]$ zcat rfcs/rfc-index.txt.06.29.07.gz | sed 's/^$/\%/' | tr
-d '\n' | tr '%' '\n' | grep '^[0-9]' | tr -s ' ' | grep -v 'Not Issued'
| sed 's/.*Status: //' | tr -d '\)' | sort | uniq -c | column
140 BEST CURRENT PRACTICE 1495 INFORMATIONAL
129 DRAFT STANDARD 1550 PROPOSED STANDARD
275 EXPERIMENTAL 87 STANDARD
205 HISTORIC 909 UNKNOWN
[compton ~]$

there are some 1700 _drafts_ currently under consideration.

ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc-index.txt
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/internet-drafts/1id-abstracts.txt

Old guy