When Google stopped capturing new Newsgroup posts, I elected to try Thunderbird as my newsgroup reader, and to use eternal-september as my newsgroup server.
This was my first attempt to use Thunderbird for newsgroup reading/posting, and I am definitely a novice.
When I first setup Thunderbird I experienced a few relatively minor difficulties (due to my inexperience), but did get it setup and was able to use it with no problem.
A few weeks ago, Thunderbird went south on me: where I once could see my newsgroup only once in the Folders column on the left, suddenly one day I could see that folder name twice in the Folders column. And from that point on, I was unable to read or send newsgroup posts.
I elected to try to start over from scratch, but struggled to get Thunderbird operational. The main problem was that I could not get Thunderbird to display the alt.comp.... newsgroups so I could choose alt.comp.software.financial.quicken (Thunderbird only displayed about a dozen newsgroups, whose names began with something like news-eternal followed by names I did not recognize.
I finally went to the Thunderbird "Community" and got some help. One apparent key was to tell Thunderbird to "Always request authentication when connecting to server". When I did that, the desired alt.comp ... newsgroup names appeared in Thunderbird for me to select from.
But my problem now is that I am now forced to enter my eternal-september user-name/password every time I run Thunderbird (and sometimes I get the Enter user-name/password message twice?). That never happened when I first started using Thunderbird (right after Google stopped capturing new newsgroup posts): I was never asked for any user-name or password before I had to start over and reconfigure Thunderbird from scratch.
I posed the user-name/password requirement question to the Thunderbird community, but have not gotten any responses. So I'm trying here, as it seems to me some here have said they use Thunderbird.
[I think I used to have a "Compose" button for initiating a new post, but I no longer see that. I have to use Message > New Message instead. Getting that Compose button back would be just a minor improvement, but it would be welcome.]
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can avoid the requirement to enter user-name/password every time I use Thunderbird? [I tried removing the requirement to "Always request authentication when connecting to server", but that did not help.]
I am also open to using a different newsgroup server and/or another newsgroup reader, if either will solve my problem.