I must say that the helpfile in Agent is one of the best if not the best I have ever seen. That was at least the case in the last version I used. Some early 1.x version. Still a pity that they don't port it to Linux (even closed source) ...true... however... The OP (probably gone but not forgotten

) wanted to discover a Linux GUI app _just like Agent_ to use on his cross-over experience of GUI apps - from that other-than-MS platform... I don't think that there is one (Linux GUI app) at this current point in time, other than perhaps even the current Pan which comes close - there is XPN but maybe XPN is more platform independent than being a strictly Linux GUI app . OTH there are Pan ports to other OS's if you are willing to install Gtk libraries. One could possibly recommend Knode as an alternative Linux GUI news-client, but really... I do think that you actually need to go back in time, wind back the clock to find a GUI app running on Linux that comes close to what Agent had to offer. That app was the *C* version of Pan, vers. 0.14.2. On Linux I do run Xnews under WINE... for fun and because I can... But when Xserving to a Linux server, my preference is to use Pan vers.0.14.2 - it beats the pants off all of the (Linux GUI) competition, even (and lamentably) its own C++ Pan successor , to date. I use Pan 0.14.2 because it can be compiled from source and I *still* run that version. I don't think that it comes included with any distro now other than in its current and newer C++ form. That is; if you try and install Pan from apt or whatever you get pointed toward the latest and greatest version, not some old fuddy-duddy out of date C version of Pan (who cares that it is still superior to what has come after it since, eh?). Stable Pan 0.14.2 still beats Xnews (AFA anything outside of ASCII goes), _BUT_ when it comes to PCRE... Pan is out of the running - not even slrn gets close to what Xnews can do when PCRE is involved (concerning simplicity, ease of use and economy of implementation). No?

:-D