My Farewell to Usenet
by frankbell from LinuxQuestions.org on (#567R5)
I cancelled my account with my usenet provider today.
The newsgroups that I follow have become but shadows of their former selves and, frankly, I was no longer getting value from my subscription.
I've been avoiding this for months. I have followed newsgroups for a quarter century or more, first via AOL when it had a newsgroup feed (back then I followed alt.folklore.urban and rec.boats, as I had a boat at the time, among others--and if you never got flamed on AFU, you have never been flamed) and later through a commercial provider that gave me excellent service for at least two decades.
Heck, when I first started using Linux, comp.os.slackware (I think that was the name of the group) was, along with LQ, one of my primary sources of support and learning. They were as friendly and welcoming as LQ's Slackware forum.
Today's Usenet is but a hollow shell of what used to be and I am saddened.
The newsgroups that I follow have become but shadows of their former selves and, frankly, I was no longer getting value from my subscription.
I've been avoiding this for months. I have followed newsgroups for a quarter century or more, first via AOL when it had a newsgroup feed (back then I followed alt.folklore.urban and rec.boats, as I had a boat at the time, among others--and if you never got flamed on AFU, you have never been flamed) and later through a commercial provider that gave me excellent service for at least two decades.
Heck, when I first started using Linux, comp.os.slackware (I think that was the name of the group) was, along with LQ, one of my primary sources of support and learning. They were as friendly and welcoming as LQ's Slackware forum.
Today's Usenet is but a hollow shell of what used to be and I am saddened.