Pan newsreader on Windows 11

Salutations.

I'm writing this as a miniature guide to getting the Pan newsreader to
work well on Windows 11.

For background, I've used lots of newsreaders over the years, and probably
most loved Xnews back in the day, but it has aged poorly, as have so many
other text-first newsreaders. However, I love its scoring capabilities,
and for me that style of scoring is a must-have. I also do like a gui,
though slrn made me switch to console mode for a few years (love it
though, still use it frequently over ssh connections, and it uses the same
scoring system!). I also used Pan built for windows for many years, but
around the time I migrated to Windows 10 it started to suffer from some UI
bugs (that may or may not be the fault of gtk on windows) that made it
unusable.

Recently though, I found an eminently acceptable solution for Pan on
windows 11, through the use of wsl2. If you're not familiar with it, it's
the "windows subsystem for linux" which basically uses some virtualization
wizardry to give you a linux distribution inside your Windows
distribution. It also turns out to be really easy to set up and use, if
you're the least bit tech savvy.

On to the basic steps, performed on a fully updated version (stable
channel) of Windows 11.

First I installed wsl2 by launching an adminstrator command prompt, and
typing the command:

# wsl --install

Which did a bunch of things and then asked me to reboot. I obliged. After
Windows came back up it prompted me to create a user and password for the
new linux distribution. I followed the prompts, and the installation was
complete.

Please note: This installed the default distribution, which is currently
Ubuntu. If you want something else, you can change this (and many other
things) if you like, but I was fine with it. If you want to investigate
more, this is a pretty good place to start:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

After this, I had an "Ubuntu" app available in my start menu. Running it
gives me a linux bash prompt. I started 'er up and updated the system with
the following commands:

# sudo apt update
-- note that this will prompt you for your password

# sudo apt upgrade

After these operations were complete, I follwed up with:

# sudo apt install pan

And after accepting the prompt, it installed the pan newsreader and its
dependencies. After that, I had a "Pan (Ubuntu)" option available in the
start menu. Running that, or typing in:

# pan

Launches Pan in it's own GUI window, and you're good to go! Everything
from that point forward worked flawlessly for me. I've been using it now
for a month or two, and it continues to work great, and I'm very happy
with it as my solution for now!

For bonus setup: I did start to grow tired of the bright white color
scheme, as I'm a dark-mode user myself. So I finally dove into how to
change my Ubuntu-based Pan to dark mode. Looks like there's quite a few
ways to do this, but the easiest one for me was as follows:

I downloaded a gtk theme called Yaru-dark. I believe there's a way to
install it using apt, but I simply downloaded the .tar file from here:
https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1252100/
By selecting the "Files (2)" tab and clicking the Yaru-dark.tar.xz link,
and saved it to my /home/<username> in Ubuntu. Obviously, replace
<username> with your own user name without the <> brackets.

(In Windows 11 you'll note that you now have a "Linux" option in your File
Explorer that allows you to navigate to your linux file system, easy!)

Then I navigated to /usr/share/themes in my Ubuntu bash shell

# cd /usr/share/themes

And emptied the Yaru-dark folder that was already there, then removed the
Yaru-dark folder.

# sudo rm Yaru-dark/gnome-shell
# sudo rmdir Yaru-dark

Then I untarred the theme

# sudo tar -x -f /home/<username>/Yaru-dark.tar

And this created a new Yaru-dark folder in /usr/share/themes for me.

Then I installed an app called gnome-tweaks in my Ubuntu distribution:

# sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

And after it was done, ran it

# gnome-tweaks

And on the Appearance tab I changed the "Applications" drop-down to Yaru-
dark.

And finally, I was done. I closed gnome-tweaks, and the next time I
launched Pan it started with its window background and decorations using a
dark mode.

I did then have to go into Pan's Preferences, Colors tab, and modify the
colors there so that they were suitable for this dark theme. For the
"Background" options, a color that VERY closely matches the Yaru-dark
background is #3C3C3C (custom color). It is not an absolutely perfect
match, but it's close enough that even though I can be sensitive to such
differences it bothers me not at all.

I don't know if this will help anyone else out there, but I post it in
hopes that it will.

All-told, it was much easier than I expected.

Sincerely,

Lafe