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### 34.2 When Gnus Starts Up

If your system has been set up for reading Usenet news, getting started with Gnus is easy—just type `M-x gnus`.

On starting up, Gnus reads your news initialization file: a file named `.newsrc` in your home directory which lists your Usenet newsgroups and subscriptions (this file is not unique to Gnus; it is used by many other newsreader programs). It then tries to contact the system’s default news server, which is typically specified by the `NNTPSERVER` environment variable.

If your system does not have a default news server, or if you wish to use Gnus for reading email, then before invoking `M-x gnus` you need to tell Gnus where to get news and/or mail. To do this, customize the variables `gnus-select-method` and/or `gnus-secondary-select-methods`. See Finding the News in The Gnus Manual.

Once Gnus has started up, it displays the group buffer. By default, the group buffer shows only a small number of subscribed groups. Groups with other statuses—unsubscribed, killed, or zombie—are hidden. The first time you start Gnus, any group to which you are not subscribed is made into a killed group; any group that subsequently appears on the news server becomes a zombie group.

To proceed, you must select a group in the group buffer to open the summary buffer for that group; then, select an article in the summary buffer to view its article buffer in a separate window. The following sections explain how to use the group and summary buffers to do this.

To quit Gnus, type `q` in the group buffer. This automatically records your group statuses in the files `.newsrc` and `.newsrc.eld`, so that they take effect in subsequent Gnus sessions.

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