newsreading with debian lenny

[Tony Baechler]

Alex Snow wrote:
> If he's running leafnode he'd want to point his newsreader to 
> localhost.
> I'm not sure why he'd bother use leafnode, I always just used rtin and 
> set it to use my ISP's newsserver.
>   

Because maybe his ISP news server is slow and crappy like most are.  
Unless you pay for something like Supernews, it makes more sense to 
locally archive groups that you want to read.  I have extensive archives 
of some newsgroups that would be impossible with any ISP news server 
that I've used.  Even with a good news server, it seems common to have 
dropped articles.  I don't mean spam, I mean good articles that get 
dropped for no reason.  It's very hard to follow a discussion with 1/3 
of the conversation missing.  No, I'm not pushing for Supernews, 
actually there are better pay news services out there.  I only mention 
them because they're cheap and offer good text archives.  I think it's 
$5 or $6 per month.  Granted that isn't free, but it's better than the 
local ISP news server.

In cases of readers other than tin, especially with very old readers 
like slrn, they expect you to run a local news server, thus leafnode is 
a good option.  Usenet, like other aspects of the Internet, goes back a 
very long time, long before broadband and the days when anyone could 
pull their own small news feed.