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//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.

-- Lafe