> Hi there!
> 2) fetching news and mail.
> --------------------------
> 
> Allthough it is nice to be able to read Usenet news online I would prefer
> to download it and read it offline. Which programs do I have to install,
> configure and run to be able to fetch Usenet news and mail at my ISP?
> 
> I guess it should be something similar to !FreeNews and !Pop which I am
> using on the RiscOS platform at the moment, but I have not been able to
> find any documentation about this :-(

POP3 is possible with the popclient set, but for outgoing mails you have to 
configure sendmail because popclient doesn't handle this.

Offline reading of news is possible if you fetch and save the intresting 
groups with tin:
(before you must create the spool directory with 'mkdirhier /var/spool/news')

tin -n -q -r -c -S -f ~/.newsrc.save -s /var/spool/news

my ~/.newsrc.save contains (list of all groups to fetch):
 
maus.sys.archimedes:
maus.sys.atari.f030:

Offline reading then is possible e.g. with exmh.

Sadly I know no way for offline posting of news. I guess for this you have to 
set up a complete newsserver on your machine :(

Ciao, Peter