# Usenet Client



## SirDice (Aug 3, 2011)

Not sure if this is the correct section, if not please move it to the correct one.

For the past couple of years I've been using pan (news/pan) which I really like. But, it has a few drawbacks, it only allows a maximum of 4 connections and it doesn't support SSL. My usenet provider allows 20 connections on my account and I'd really like to use SSL.

So my question is, what alternative usenet clients are there?


 Preferably GTK but if the client is good enough I won't mind QT
 'tasklist' so articles/attachments are queued and downloaded in the background while still being able to browse/read postings
 support for more then 4 concurrent connections
 SSL support
 Images and such should be visible 'inline' in a posting
 supports Yenc
 able to handle multipart postings

I think that pretty much sums up the 'requirements' I have :e

As I said, I'm happy to continue using pan, just wondering if there's something else out there (and I couldn't really find anything in the ports tree).


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## bes (Aug 3, 2011)

Mozilla Thunderbird , Sylpheed , some other,  offer SSL for newsgroups.
Have a look at this: Comparison of Usenet newsreaders
There is no SSL support in Pan, however you can use STunnel to accomplish the same thing.
Configuring a newsreader with Stunnel SSL


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## SirDice (Aug 3, 2011)

I looked at thunderbird quite some time ago, it's not the best. It's a nice mail client but it's usenet handling leaves a lot to be desired. Haven't looked at Sylpheed yet, I'm definitely going to try that one.

I had looked at stunnel so I may go that route. Still leaves me with only 4 connections though


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## bes (Aug 3, 2011)

You can try to increase the connection limit to an arbitrary number by editing servers.xml

```
...
<connection-limit>4</connection-limit>
...
```
Restart pan if it is already running .


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## SirDice (Aug 4, 2011)

That's funny. If you change it in server settings to 8 it doesn't work but if you change it in that servers.xml it does.

Brilliant :e


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