Usenet is a distributed system that has been around since 1980. Wikipedia's Usenet Article is a good resource if you're interested in Usenet's history
Usenet is often used today for sharing files. Because usenet is distributed and decentralised, it has proven to be remarkably resilient to certain problems that have plagued other services. Conversely, because you transfer files directly from servers, it doesn't suffer from the slow speeds and unpredictable nature of peer-to-peer systems such as bittorrent.
This website serves as a brief introduction as to how to get started with Usenet. It's essentially a nicely formatted version of the e-mail I've been sending friends who have asked me how to get started.
To get going with usenet you're going to need an account with a provider (they give you a server to download from), an indexer (a search engine for usenet to find the files you want) and a usenet client to actually download. You can get going in a matter of minutes with these, but you'll probably want to automate at least some of the process. Once you have a basic setup going, you can follow more advanced guides to make a more robust setup.
Providers give you access to a server that has a mirror of everything available on usenet, going back to a certain point in history (known as retention). All providers in theory have the same content, but in reality there are occasional errors. Providers are not all equal - some may offer more connections or a higher speed or better value for money. The good news is that there are a lot to choose from and a fair amount of competition in the market. If you have a high speed internet connection you may want to prioritise choosing a provider that has servers in your geographic area.
To get started, you'll need at least one usenet provider. Many providers offer free trials - we've compiled a list here!
Once you've got up and running with a free trial, follow one of our advanced guides to get a strategy for choosing your providers.
Content in usenet is most easily found by searching Indexers. There public and private indexers, and there are free and paid services. A free service will work well for getting started, but there are some advantages to paid services. Most of the paid services offer a free account with limitations that, again, are great for getting started with. We've compiled a list of indexers for you here
Because usenet was originally designed to transfer small articles, large files must be broken down into many small parts. These parts are collated with NZB files, and its these files that your indexer will provide you and your downloading software will understand.
At this point, you hopefully have a free trial at a usenet provider and an account at a usenet indexer with at least some free access.
The next step is to choose a file that interests you and download it!
The most common programs to download with are sabnzbd and NZBGet. These programs can take a few minutes to set up but come with good instructions and pay off in terms of automation in the future.
By now you're at the point where you can download a few files at speeds as fast as your internet connection can handle. Now's the time to investigate automating the process. I recommend sticking with sabnzbd or NZBGet and then using software to automatically make requests in your indexer for you. I recommend sonarr for finding TV shows, CouchPotato for movies and Headphones for music. All of these are in active development and work well with most indexers.