If you haven’t used Emacs much before using Gnus, read Emacs for Heathens first.
If your system administrator has set things up properly, starting Gnus
and reading news is extremely easy—you just type M-x gnus in
your Emacs. If not, you should customize the variable
gnus-select-method as described in Finding the News. For a
minimal setup for posting should also customize the variables
user-full-name and user-mail-address.
If you want to start Gnus in a different frame, you can use the command M-x gnus-other-frame instead.
If things do not go smoothly at startup, you have to twiddle some variables in your ~/.gnus.el file. This file is similar to ~/.emacs, but is read when Gnus starts.
If you puzzle at any terms used in this manual, please refer to the terminology section (see Terminology).