Newsgroup in general

I've heard about newsgroup concept when I started studying IT at the university. But I couldn't be well aware of what it is, how to use. And I got into it by chance today, see this quote

On the web there are thousands, probably millions, of discussion forums, dedicated to particular areas of interest. You use your browser to navigate to the "forum" web page of a site that interests you, where you can read what other people have written. You can usually post new messages to the forum after completing a web form to register your name, e-mail address, etc, at the forum.

A newsgroup isn't like that. A newsgroup is a completely different, very much older, type of forum. Newsgroups were invented over a quarter of a century ago, long before the World Wide Web existed. Newsgroups work with special software called "newsreaders" and "news servers" instead of web browsers and web servers.

If you're not really interested in how newsgroups work – you simply want to know how to read and post messages with a minimum of fuss – you'll be pleased to hear that Google provides a web-based interface to newsgroups that makes them look pretty-much like normal web-based discussion forums. It's called Google Groups. But bear in mind that the Google Groups way of doing things is quite cumbersome, and most newsgroup users prefer to use the newsreader software described next.

To connect directly (not via Google) to a newsgroup you'll need newsreader software installed on your PC. Many PCs come with a newsreader already installed - it's Microsoft Outlook Express, the same program that many people use for e-mail. Popular alternative newsreaders include Forte Agent and Mozilla Thunderbird.

The newsreader needs to be configured to connect via the Internet to a suitable news server. There are thousands of news servers round the world and it usually doesn't matter much which one you connect to. Many ISPs provide free news servers. Alternatively many alt.usage.english regulars make use of the inexpensive server provided at News.Individual.NET.

Having configured your newsreader to use an available news server, you can "subscribe" to any number of newsgroups. Subscription is free and no registration process or password is required – all you have to provide is the name(s) of the newsgroup(s) you're interested in. more

Then I google the phrase "news server free" and got a lot of useful results. Anyway, it took a long time to know what it is ^^