tin: Perhaps a simpler newsreader option

For about a month now I’ve been meddling with slrn, ever since I got it configured and working. It’s a graceful and elegant tool for the task of sifting through newsgroups, even if the content is … usually less than “quality.” 🙄

If slrn eludes you, like it did for me for a long time, tin might be a better, easier option.

  

With no configuration whatsoever, just tin -g news.aioe.org gave me more or less the same access to the news as slrn did, with less pre-game effort required. From tin’s opening screen I just pressed SHIFT+S, to subscribe to the *linux* pattern, and in due time got pretty much everything available. For better or for worse. 🙄

Featurewise, I can’t attest to how they compare; I have very little experience with newsreaders on the whole. I can tell you that both have onboard help pages, both can use color for ease of viewing, and both employ tree structures to show how discussions evolved.

At this early point, the only real benefit I can see of slrn over tin is that the former allows you to see both the tree and the message at once, split-screen style. It may be that tin can do that, and I just haven’t found what button to press yet.

Between the two I will probably stick with slrn, only because I’m still learning it and don’t feel comfortable giving up what little ground I’ve gained to learn a new program. Given time I might be willing to jump ship, seeing as tin seems easier to get started, and my newsreading demands are exceptionally light.

And given the quality of the “news” I get, it’s no real loss either way. 😐