Understanding Newsgroups

Reading Newsgroups with Mozilla Mail

You can browse newsgroups and post articles from Mozilla Mail, one of the components of Mozilla-the Web browser that comes with Red Hat Linux on this book's companion CD-ROMs. You can start Mozilla by selecting Main Menu>Internet>Mozilla Web Browser

or by clicking the earth icon on the panel. When you start to read newsgroups for the first time, follow these steps to set up the news account:

1. Select Windows>Mail & Newsgroups from the Mozilla menu. The Mozilla Mail and News (called Mozilla Mail, for short) window appears.

2. Select Edit>Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings from the Mozilla Mail menu. A dialog box appears.

3. Click Add Account. The Account Wizard appears.

4. Click the Newsgroup account radio button, and click Next.

5. Fill in your identity information-name and email address-and click Next.

6. Enter your news server name (provided by your ISP), and click Next.

7. Enter a descriptive name of the newsgroup account, and click Next.

8. Click Finish to complete the newsgroup account setup.

The new newsgroup account now appears in the list of accounts on the left-hand side of the Mozilla Mail window. Click the newsgroup's account name, and the right-hand side shows the options for the newsgroup account.

Click the Subscribe to newsgroups link. Mozilla Mail starts to download the list of newsgroups from the news server.

If your ISP's news server requires a user name and password, you are prompted for that information. After that, Mozilla Mail downloads the list of newsgroups and displays them in the Subscribe dialog box. You can enter a search string in a text box to narrow down the list. When you find the newsgroups you want, click the check box to subscribe to these newsgroups, then click OK to close the dialog box.

After you subscribe to newsgroups, those newsgroups appear under the newsgroup account name in the left-hand side of the Mozilla Mail window. You can then read a newsgroup using these steps:

1. Click a newsgroup name (for example, comp.os.linux.announce). This brings up a dialog box that asks you how many message headers you want to download.

2. Specify the number of headers (for example, 500) you want, and then click OK to proceed. Mozilla Mail downloads the headers from the newsgroup and displays a list in the upper-right area of the window.

3. From the list of headers, click an item to read that article.

To select other subscribed newsgroups, click on the newsgroup's name in the left-hand side of the window.

Understanding the Newsgroup Hierarchy

News items are organized in a hierarchy of newsgroups for ease of maintenance as well as ease of use. A typical newsgroup name looks like the following:

comp.os.linux.announce

This name says that comp.os.linux.announce is a newsgroup for announcements (announce) about the Linux operating system (os.linux) and that these subjects fall under the broad category of computers (comp).

As you can see, the format of a newsgroup name is a sequence of words separated by periods. These words denote the hierarchy of the newsgroup.

Secret

To understand the newsgroup hierarchy, compare the newsgroup's name with the pathname of a file (such as /usr/lib/X11/xinit/Xclients) in Linux. Just as a file's pathname shows the directory hierarchy of the file, the newsgroup name shows the newsgroup hierarchy. In filenames, a slash (/) separates the names of directories; in a newsgroup's name, a period (.) separates the different levels in the newsgroup hierarchy.

In a newsgroup's name, the first word represents the newsgroup category. The comp.os.linux.announce newsgroup, for example, is in the comp category, whereas alt.books.technical is in the alt category.

Table 16-1 lists some of the major newsgroup categories.

This short list of categories is deceptive because it does not really tell you about the wide-ranging variety of newsgroups available in each category. Because each newsgroup category contains several levels of subcategories, the overall count of newsgroups runs into several thousands. The comp category alone has more than 500 newsgroups.

Typically, you have to narrow your choice of newsgroups according to your interests. If you are interested in Linux, for example, you can pick one or more of these newsgroups:

• comp.os.linux.admin-Information about Linux system administration

• comp.os.linux.advocacy-Discussions about promoting Linux

• comp.os.linux.announce-Important announcements about Linux. This newsgroup is moderated, which means that you must mail the article to the moderator, who then posts it to the newsgroup if the article is appropriate for the newsgroup.

• comp.os.linux.answers-Questions and answers about Linux. All the Linux HOWTOs are posted in this moderated newsgroup. (See Chapter 7 for a list of Linux HOWTOs.)

• comp.os.linux.development-Current Linux development work

• comp.os.linux.development.apps-Linux application development

• comp.os.linux.development.system-Linux operating-system development

• comp.os.linux.hardware-Discussions about Linux and various types of hardware

• comp.os.linux.help-Help with various aspects of Linux

• comp.os.linux.misc-Miscellaneous Linux-related topics

• comp.os.linux.networking-Networking under Linux

• comp.os.linux.redhat-Red Hat Linux-related topics

• comp.os.linux.setup-Linux setup and installation

• comp.os.linux.x-Discussions about setting up and running the X Window System under Linux

• linux.redhat-Discussions about Red Hat Linux

You have to be selective about what newsgroups you read because it's impossible to keep up with all the news, even in a specific area such as Linux. When you first install and set up Linux, you might read newsgroups such as comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux .hardware, and comp.os.linux.x (especially if you are having problems with X). After you have Linux up and running, you may want to learn only about new things happening in Linux. For such information, read the comp.os.linux.announce newsgroup.