USENET, where and how...

[Nandy]

Ok, i have been told to look for information on usenet. Now how the heck do you do this?? What and where is usenet? and the most importantm how do you use it to find information.

Thanks,

Nandy

[Gray_Race]

The Usenet is another part of the Internet(like e-mail, IRC, www, bbs). It is probably the most least knowen part.

It is most commenly refered to as Newsgroups, due to the method by which it is used. In order to get on you Usenet, you need a Newsgroup reader. Netscape comes packaged with one called Collabra, and there are others like Knode. So you need to pick a Newsgroup reader program first.

After you've picked your Newsreader you need to find a newsgroup server. Most ISPs have a free server you can connect to, you can conntact you ISP to find out what it is(they might also be able to help you in configuring your newsreader) If you can't or don't want to get help from your ISP, go to a website like www.newzbot.com (http://www.newzbot.com) and find some open/free newsserver.

Once you have a newsserver, open up your newsreader and configure the server. Once the server is configured you have to download a list of avalible newsgroups. There are littirly 10s of thousends of newsgroups out there so depending on the server, it may take a while to download them all. Once you have the list downloaded, you can search it for whatever newsgroup your looking for. Say you could search for linux(though you'll probably come up with a few thousend).

Once you found a newsgroup you like, you subscribe to it. You then go out of the search and connect to that newsgroup, the newsreader will download a list of headers(similer to headlines of a paper). You find a header that looks intresting, you click on it and the newsreader will download the whole message(article if it was a newspaper).

I hope that's enough to get you started. If you need more help please ask.

[Malakin]

http://groups.google.com

[PLBlaze]

Or just go to http://groups.google.com and type in your search...simple as that :D

[Nandy]

I got it, thanks for all your help!!!!


Nandy

[finalfiler]

Originally posted by Nandy
Ok, i have been told to look for information on usenet. Now how the heck do you do this?? What and where is usenet? and the most importantm how do you use it to find information.


Moreover, how to access Newsgroups when the client will only download the first few hundred newsgroup group names and then time out?

Can anyone help me on this? I'm on a dial up modem, Mandrake 8.2 distro. Everything else is working great.

Back to the question- use windoze, of course <g>