[Pan-users] Re: Re: What is "Score"

[Duncan]

Travis posted <address@hidden>, excerpted below, 
on Fri, 26 Aug 2005 10:38:10 -0700:

> Is BNR3 beta 0.14.6 as stable as Pan 0.14.2?

As I've said, it's not freedomware (can't be compiled from source by a
freedomware compiler such as gcc), so I don't run it.  However, several
folks here run either BNR2 or BNR3, and swear by it for binaries.  I
believe they're both fairly stable in the one sense, but BNR2 tends to eat
its database file if it gets too big.  Everyone says delete it before it
at about half or 3/4 gig, and download overviews again, and it'll be
stable.

BNR3 is (they say) almost exactly the same, except the database is
different, more stable so it doesn't need deleted, but also somewhat
slower.  What "slower" means in actual use, I really can't say, but
apparently, it's /enough/ slower, that on a 4 Mbps pipe, connecting to 3
or more servers, some prefer BNR2 and just delete the database file for it
periodically (between half and three quarter gig, as I said).

>From all accounts, the big issue with BNR2/3 isn't the stability, it's the
UI.  It's /very/ powerful, allowing all sorts of interesting stuff, but
some just can't get used to the way it works, as it's rather different
than traditional newsreaders because it is /not/ a traditional newsreader,
but a binary news harvester, and the UI is tuned for harvesting, not for
reading.  That's just too big a jump for some folks to comfortably make.

That said, as I said, it's very powerful.  Again, I've not used it, but
those that do say that with its want filters and other features such as
virtual servers and virtual groups, they can spend as little as 15 minutes
a day managing it, updating want filters and the like, where they used to
spend hours with a traditional news reader babysitting downloads.  I know
one guy that downloads his own stuff, plus feeds the regular series
requests from several friends to the thing as well, Downloading TV shows
and the like for not only himself, but several friends, and managing it
all in, as I said, about 15 minutes a day, then he goes off and leaves it
going, and checks on it again in the morning, generally finding it all
done.  He then burns a DVD with the shows on it each friend wants, a time
or two a week, and gives it to them.

As I said, BNR2/3 work on both MSWormOS and Linux.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html