= 2025-07-06 Sunday =

I thought there were no free USENET NNTP servers left and that the
protocol was dead....

I was wrong!

I read on gopher.icu [0] that there was another phlog about USENET
on box.matto.nl [1] and found that there's a German USENET server
at news.eternal-september.org that's free (needs a registration of
username).

matto's post also shows how to configure slrn!

I used slrn in the distant past and have now got it set up and
working on eternal-september

This is another piece in the jigsaw of regaining my old love of
simple internet services.

I used to participate in uk.rec.sheds back in 1998/99 and I see
it's still going strong, and I even recognise some of the
user_names from that time, over 25 years ago!!

A year or so ago I had a go at using some of the old clients again.

I even connected a serial terminal to a linux box and started using
Pine (or whatever has replaced it) for email. I wanted at that time
to use slrn but found no usable NNTP server at my ISP, and assumed
that the protocol had gone. Google used to provide web access to
NNTP groups and that had gone.

I'm really happy to have a working NNTP client.

I've spent a few hours installing AntiX Linux (no X, no GUI, plain
text virtual consoles only) on an old Samsung N150 netbook.

Now I've got :

UMN Gopher client Lynx SLRN

Should I find Pine too, and really roll back the years?

I'm tempted to sign up for an account at one of the pubnix servers,
and join in the community. It all seems to be synchronicity...

-- 

[0] gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Computing/Usenet-update.md 
[1] gopher://box.matto.nl/0/usenet-getting-started-guide.txt