I recently learned about Gemini and how its development is being tracked on Usenet. This got me interested in accessing Usenet.
Registering with Usenet Provider
The first step is to register with a Usenet provider. Since I am primarily interested in the comp.infosystems.gemini group I can use a free provider which only gives text access. I chose to use https://www.eternal-september.org/. Registration was extremely straight forward and I received credentials via email.
Installing tin (Usenet reader)
I looked around for a Linux based Usenet reader and came across tin. I am currently using a Windows laptop with WSL-2 installed running Ubuntu 20.04. I installed tin using:
sudo apt-get install tin
Authenticating with tin
I created a ~/.newsauth file readable only by myself (chmod go-r ~/.newsauth) and placed my credentials inside it in the recommended format:
news.eternal-september.org <password> <username>
All of this information came from the registration email I got from eternal-septemeber.
Configuring tin
To use neovim as the editor of choice when replying to articles I set export EDITOR='nvim' in my ~/.zshrc. I also set TIN_HOMEDIR="$HOME/.tin" to consolidate the various configuration files.
To correctly identify myself when posting articles (replies) I modified ~/.tin/tinrc and set mail_address="Abid H. Mujtaba" <abid.mujtaba@protonmail.com>
Running tin
Launch via: tin -r -g news.eternal-september.org -A comp.infosystems.gemini
-r tells tin to fetch from articles from the remote server (rather than local). -g is used to specify which remote server to use (eternal-september in my case), and -A tells tin to authenticate with the remote server (using the credentials in ~/.newsauth, prompts for creds if that file doesn't exist).
One can set NNTPSERVER="news.eternal-september.org" to avoid having to specify -g. Similarly one can (initially) place the line comp.infosystems.gemini: (note the necessary colon at the end) in ~/.tin/.newsrc (extra info will be appended after the colon automatically as you interact with the usenet group). With these changes one can simply issue tin -r -A.
Using tin
To get started, select a thread (of articles). To read the next article in the thread click n (p for the previous article). Use j and k to move down and up inside an article. Can also enter the article number (within the thread) to jump to it.
To post in response to an article use f (follow-up). This is different then replying (r) which sends an email to the author (using sendmail).
