OT: usenet reader software

[memilanuk]

Given the ongoing hub-bub about Google Groups and some recent long 
threads where I *really* wanted to be able to mute/ignore certain 
individuals/subjects... I started looking into other choices for Usenet 
reader software again.  I use news.gmane.org as a mail2news gateway for 
reading a lot of lists besides just this one, and gmane is about the 
most convenient way to do so without being bombarded by emails every day.

I'm on Ubuntu (14.04 LTS, if it matters) and I've been using Thunderbird 
for a loooong time... I've tinkered with slrn off and on over the years, 
tried pan occasionally due to recommendations... but I keep ending up 
back @ Thunderbird.  About the only thing it doesn't do that I really 
want is scoring/kill-files.  Slrn has those, and I do use vim on 
occasion so that worked well enough... but when people *do* post links 
or html it didn't handle that stuff gracefully like Thunderbird.  Pan... 
locks up and crashes often enough to be annoying, and I can't get it to 
display 'Threads with Unread' (i.e. new unread posts *with* their 
associated threads for context) - just 'Unread' or 'everything'.  Never 
messed with gnus... emacs was never really my thing.

Guess where I'm going with this is... is there anything out there worth 
trying - on Linux - that I'm missing?