OSDev.org

Hi all! Just a quick question till I get some time to stfw.. I wonder, how do newsgroups work? I often see their names, such as "alt.os.development" but what does it mean? Is it a specific newsgroup name under a specific server.. or could any server allow me to access this group?

And so, is Mozilla able to read newsgroups? ???

Cheers
Adrian

Yes, those are newsgroup names, and they are organised in a heirarchial way. alt.* means alternative, I think, and there's a lot of other stuff, like comp.*, etc. They are distributed across many thousands of newsgroup servers around the world. You get them from your ISP's newsgroup server, normally named news.yourisp.com, on the NNTP port (usually 119). Mozilla can indeed read news. Go to Window->Mail and Newsgroups, Edit->Mail and Newsgroup settings, and enter "news.yourispname.com" or whatever it is, and under "outgoing server (SMTP)" enter your mail server's name, normally mail.yourisp.com, port 25. You don't normally need a username and password, so leave that section. Under "Server Settings" for the Edit->Mail and Newsgroups dialog, you enter the news server name and the port. Just enter news.yourisp.com and port 119 like I said. If that doesn't work, call your ISP's tech support line and ask them for the newsgroups server name and port number.

Once you've done that, and dismiss the preferences/settings dialog for your newsgroup settings, the left hand side pane will show your account name (whatever you called it in your settings) and you click that to highlight it, and in the main window to the right click "Manage Newsgroup Subscriptions". This may take a while if you have a slow modem, since it queries the news server for all the available newsgroups. Once this is done, you should have a window where you can type a newsgroup name, or part of a name, such as "alt.os" and Mozilla news will search for newsgroup names matching that, and you select each group you want to subscribe to by clicking the checkbox, and then hit the subscribe button. Click OK when you're done, and click each newsgroup name (which expand down in the left hand side window when you've selected your newsgroup account name).

Hope this helps.

That having been said, it is also possible to use Google Groups (formerly DejaNews), a web-based newsreader. However, GG often has an update delay of 12 to 24 hours on average (sometimes going up to 72 hours), so both the posts you read and those you send will be rather later than if you used a standalone newsreader. It also does not carry certain newsgroups (primarily the more ahem controversial binaries groups), and the depth of the spool is only a few days. It is helpful, however, in the (increasingly common) case that your ISP does not provide an NNTP server. YMMV.

thanks! I think I understand it and furthermore, some googling responded with http://www.news2mail.com/alt/os/development.html. Hey I got it to work Thanks! ;D ;D