News Software Info Wanted

[Bob Sutterfield]

| From: tijc02!cgh018 at rti.rti.org (Calvin Hayden )
| Date: 8 Mar 90 16:08:54 GMT
|
| ...we are using ... "netnews 2.10"... with "vn" as our news reader.

That's pretty ancient.  The current B news release is 2.11 (patchlevel
19), and C news is out.  If you're basically just starting, which you are
if you're still running 2.10, then you may as well go with C news.

| We are soon to be moving over to a Sun network... In your opinion,
| what usenet-feed software (such as netnews) seems to work the best
| on a Sun?

C news absorbs fewer cycles than B news, generally.  But it hasn't been in
use for as long, and 2.11+19 is very stable and functional.  See
news.software.b and news.admin for general discussion.

Since you'll be setting up an internal network, you will want to set up
only one machine as a news cache, with all the others accessing their news
from it via NNTP.

| Which news reader seems to work best on a Sun?

There are dozens.  rn (currently 4.3+44) is a popular semi-standard, and
lotsa folks like nn.  If you use GNU Emacs, there are two very good
interfaces available: GNUS (currently version 3.12, though 3.13 will be
out shortly) and gnews (currently 2.0).  If you use X, there's xrn.

| How much trouble are these to install them on a Sun?  

None at all.  Suns are something of a reference standard for portability
of this kind of stuff.  If you're accustomed to 2.10, you'll find that
almost anything newer will be far easier to install and maintain.

| How buggy have these proven to be?  

C news hasn't been around as long as B news 2.11, but there are a lot of
folks (including ourselves) who are plenty satisfied with it.  Some small
leaf sites and some major backbone sites run 2.11, and some of each run C
news.

| And last, where can I get them -- I only have uucp access through rti?

You can get all this stuff (except nn) via anonymous UUCP from osu-cis.
Write to uucp at cis.ohio-state.edu (== osu-cis!uucp) for instructions.