Converting to Gnus

[Neil Woods]

I would like to convert my current news and mail setup to Gnus.

Currently I use fetchmail, fetching my various mail sources (POP3) via
my local exim, which then calls procmail to sort my mail into a spool
directory under ~/Mail into various incoming mbox files, which are
then in turn read and displayed by my current MUA, mutt. The
~/.procmailrc is mostly used to create mailboxes for subscribed
to mailing lists. It also has some (fairly basic) spam filtering
included.

Reading the Gnus tutorial at my.gnus.org, it suggests reading from the
various POP3 sources directly.

I've been putting off converting to Gnus for some time, since I'm
unsure how to proceed.

Which is better - using my current mail setup above, (ie
fetchmail->procmail, with possible slight modifications), or
converting to using the direct Gnus method(s)?

Can I integrate spamassassin into the latter, or would ifile (and
ifile-gnus-el) be a better solution.

I understand using the nnml backend is the recommended (and fastest)
method.

I'm running a Debian sid system, with the latest (Debian packaged)
Gnus installed.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Neil.