Comparison of Usenet newsreaders

Last updated

This is a comparison of Usenet newsreaders .

Name User interface Client typeDownloading headers XOVER PAR NZB unZip or unRARIntegrated search service (retention / $$$/yr) IPv6 SSL/TLSAudio video streamingPrice Platform LicenseOther
Arachne GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoFree DOS, Unix-like GPL
BinTube GUI Binary GrabberNoYesYesYesYes
(3200 days / free)		YesYesYes$59.95 / Free with subscription Windows Proprietary Streams media while downloading; free with Usenet service
Claws Mail GUI Traditional newsreaderYes [1] NoNoNoNoYesNoFree Cross-platform GPL
Forté Agent GUI CombinationYesYesYesYesYes$29 Windows Proprietary Shareware, includes 3 month newsgroup service trial
Gnus Text-based Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoNoYesYesNoFree Cross-platform GPL Runs in Emacs; also does Email
GrabIt GUI Binary GrabberYesYesYesYesYes

( 30 days / $24.99/yr )

NoYesFree (searching extra) Windows Proprietary Usenet search service
GroupWise GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoVaries Windows, Unix-like Proprietary
HCL Notes GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoVaries Windows, Unix-like, macOS Proprietary
KNode GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoYesYesFree Unix-like GPL KDE
Lynx Text-basedTraditional newsreaderYesNoNoYesYesFree Cross-platform GPL Limited USENET support
Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoNoFree Cross-platform MPL–GPL–LGPL tri-licenseReplaced by SeaMonkey Mail & Newsgroups
Mozilla Thunderbird GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoNoYesYesFree Cross-platform MPL Plugin support
Newsbin Pro GUI Binary GrabberYesYesYesYesYes

( $10/yr )

YesYes$20 Windows Proprietary Shareware
NewsLeecher GUI CombinationYesYesYesYesYes

Optional extra Add $10 per year

NoYesVaries Windows Proprietary Shareware
Opera Mail GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoYesYesFree Cross-platform Proprietary Part of Opera, up to version 12.17
Outlook Express GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoNoYesYes Windows Proprietary Part of Windows, up to Windows Server 2003
Pan GUI CombinationYesNoYesNoYesYesFree Unix-like, Windows GPL Gtk+
SeaMonkey Mail & Newsgroups GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoNoYesYesFree Cross-platform MPL Replaced Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups
slrn text-based Traditional newsreaderYesYes

(using macros)

Yes

(using macros)

Yes

(using macros)

NoYesYesNoFree Cross-platform GPLv2+ Highly extensible using S-Lang scripts (macros)
Sylpheed GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoYesFree Cross-platform GPL–LGPL Gtk+
tin text-based Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoNoYesYesFree Unix-like BSD Free software
Unison GUI CombinationYesYesYesYesNoYesYesYes

(audio only)

Free macOS Proprietary Development ceased; free, unsupported
Usenet Explorer GUI CombinationYesYesYesYesYes

( 1500 days / $23.34/yr )

YesYes$35 Windows Proprietary Shareware
Windows Live Mail GUI Traditional newsreaderYesYesFree Windows Proprietary
Windows Mail GUI Traditional newsreaderYesYes Windows Proprietary Part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008; Windows 10 omits newsgroup and Usenet support [2] [ better source needed ]
Xnews GUI CombinationYesNoNo
(Can create NBZs)		NoFree Windows Proprietary
XPN GUI Traditional newsreaderYesNoNoYesFree Cross-platform GPL
Name User interface Client typeDownloading headers XOVER PAR NZB unZip unRARIntegrated search service (retention / $$$/yr) IPv6 SSL/TLSAudio video streamingPrice Platform LicenseOther

Legend:

active product
Discontinued support for newsgroups

See also

Related Research Articles

A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups.

rn is a news client written by Larry Wall and originally released in 1984. It was one of the first newsreaders to take full advantage of character-addressable CRT terminals. Previous newsreaders, such as readnews, were mostly line-oriented and designed for use on the printing terminals which were common on the early Unix minicomputers where the Usenet software and network originated. Later variants of the original rn program included rrn, trn, and strn.

The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. B News maintainer and UUNET founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming.

Newsreader can refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News server</span> Type of server software

A news server is a collection of software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. Access to Usenet is only available through news server providers.

The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (netnews) between news servers, and for reading/posting articles by the end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the University of California, San Diego, and Phil Lapsley of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote RFC 977, the specification for the Network News Transfer Protocol, in March 1986. Other contributors included Stan O. Barber from the Baylor College of Medicine and Erik Fair of Apple Computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B News</span> Usenet news server

B News was a Usenet news server developed at the University of California, Berkeley by Matt Glickman and Mary Ann Horton as a replacement for A News. It was used on Unix systems from 1981 into the 1990s and is the reference implementation for the de facto Usenet standard described in RFC 850 and RFC 1036. Releases from 2.10.2 were maintained by UUNET founder Rick Adams.

X-No-Archive, also known colloquially as xna, is a newsgroup message header field used to prevent a Usenet message from being archived in various servers.

Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups. Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, i.e. repeated posting of a message or very similar messages to newsgroups. The spam may be commercial advertisements, opinionated messages, malicious files, or nonsensical posts designed to disrupt the newsgroups. A type of newsgroup spam is sporgery which is intended to make the targeted newsgroups unreadable. The prevalence of Usenet spam led to the development of the Breidbart Index as an objective measure of a message's "spamminess", and attempts to purge newsgroups of spam.

Gmane is an e-mail to news gateway. It allows users to access electronic mailing lists as if they were Usenet newsgroups, and also through a variety of web interfaces. Since Gmane is a bidirectional gateway, it can also be used to post on the mailing lists. Gmane is an archive; it never expires messages. Gmane also supports importing list postings made prior to a list's inclusion on the service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Groups</span> Service from Google that provides discussion groups

Google Groups is a service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. Until February 2024, the Groups service also provided a gateway to Usenet newsgroups, both reading and posting to them, via a shared user interface. In addition to accessing Google groups, registered users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere.

Forté Agent was an email and Usenet news client used on the Windows operating system. Agent was conceived, designed and developed by Mark Sidell and the team at Forté Internet Software in 1994 to address the need for an online/offline newsreader which capitalized on the emerging Windows GUI framework. By 1995, Agent had expanded to become a full-featured email client and remains a widely used application for integrating news and email communication on Windows. Agent supports POP email but not IMAP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups</span>

Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups was an e-mail and news client that was part of the Mozilla Application Suite.

tin (newsreader)

tin is an open-source, text-based, threaded newsreader, used to read and post messages on Usenet, the worldwide distributed discussion system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GrabIt</span> Freeware Usenet newsreader

GrabIt is a freeware Usenet newsreader for Windows developed by Ilan Shemes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newsreader (Usenet)</span> Application program

A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet distributed throughout newsgroups. Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), to download articles and post new articles. In addition to text-based articles, Usenet is also used to distribute binary files, generally in dedicated "binaries" newsgroups.

Newsbin Pro is a shareware Usenet newsreader client for Microsoft Windows. It is developed by DJI Interprises

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Usenet</span> Worldwide computer-based distributed discussion system

Usenet, USENET, or, "in full", User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

Usenet, a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system, can be accessed through Web browsers as well as through dedicated news clients.

References

  1. ↑ "Claws Mail release notes". NNTP: Fetch XOVER and XHDR data in batches of 5000...
  2. ↑ "Windows 10 Mail + Newsgroups". Microsoft.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.