Newsreaders vary considerably from the simple to the very complex, from character-based to graphic, and from useful to atrocious. Many newsreaders are currently available with Linux distributions, and more newsreaders are appearing as programmers convert their favorite UNIX or DOS-based newsreaders to work under Linux. Although this chapter can't look at every newsreader currently available, it can show you the basic configuration requirements for the most commonly used newsreaders. This information, coupled with the documentation that accompanies new newsreaders, should help you set up your Linux system for optimum behavior of the news system. Configuring trn The trn newsreader is widely used by UNIX users.
Most systems can run trn without any modifications to the files, unless they want to use threads.
To enable threads to be followed, trn needs to be able to construct a thread database that shows the interrelationships between articles. Without any arguments, mthreads generates index files for the thread databases only for newly arriving articles in all newsgroups. If you want to index only a few newsgroups, you can supply the newsgroup names as arguments either in the crontab file or at the shell prompt. For example, the command mthreads rec.auto.antique reindexes the rec.auto.antique thread database. You can reindex more than one newsgroup at a time by separating the names with a comma.