OT: Thunderbird, or ....

When Google stopped capturing new Newsgroup posts, I elected to try 
Thunderbird as my newsgroup reader, and to use eternal-september as my 
newsgroup server.

This was my first attempt to use Thunderbird for newsgroup 
reading/posting, and I am definitely a novice.

When I first setup Thunderbird I experienced a few relatively minor 
difficulties (due to my inexperience), but did get it setup and was able 
to use it with no problem.

A few weeks ago, Thunderbird went south on me: where I once could see my 
newsgroup only once in the Folders column on the left, suddenly one day 
I could see that folder name twice in the Folders column. And from that 
point on, I was unable to read or send newsgroup posts.

I elected to try to start over from scratch, but struggled to get 
Thunderbird operational. The main problem was that I could not get 
Thunderbird to display the alt.comp.... newsgroups so I could choose 
alt.comp.software.financial.quicken (Thunderbird only displayed about a 
dozen newsgroups, whose names began with something like news-eternal 
followed by names I did not recognize.

I finally went to the Thunderbird "Community" and got some help. One 
apparent key was to tell Thunderbird to "Always request authentication 
when connecting to server". When I did that, the desired alt.comp ... 
newsgroup names appeared in Thunderbird for me to select from.

But my problem now is that I am now forced to enter my eternal-september 
user-name/password every time I run Thunderbird (and sometimes I get the 
Enter user-name/password message twice?). That never happened when I 
first started using Thunderbird (right after Google stopped capturing 
new newsgroup posts): I was never asked for any user-name or password 
before I had to start over and reconfigure Thunderbird from scratch.

I posed the user-name/password requirement question to the Thunderbird 
community, but have not gotten any responses. So I'm trying here, as it 
seems to me some here have said they use Thunderbird.

[I think I used to have a "Compose" button for initiating a new post, 
but I no longer see that. I have to use Message > New Message instead. 
Getting that Compose button back would be just a minor improvement, but 
it would be welcome.]

Does anyone have any suggestions how I can avoid the requirement to 
enter user-name/password every time I use Thunderbird?
[I tried removing the requirement to "Always request authentication when 
connecting to server", but that did not help.]

I am also open to using a different newsgroup server and/or another 
newsgroup reader, if either will solve my problem.