This bug has been reported here: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/1928

"Everything is smooth until evolution is about to download the initial list
of groups from the server, then it just keeps "loading". All other parts of
evolution is still working when it loads....

I have verified that its not my isp or connection that gives me trouble,
news reading in Pan to same newsserver works perfectly.

Atleast it looks likes Evolution tries to connect or something in this case
to news.gmane.org

henrik@Elin ~ $ netstat -an|grep 80.91.229.5
tcp        0      0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:34715   80.91.229.5:119        
ESTABLISHED"



I've the same problem here when trying with news.wanadoo.fr

$ CAMEL_DEBUG=all  evolution
....
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(106): '200 Bienvenue sur news.wanadoo.fr, le serveur de
news est disponible. - newsmaster@wanadoo.fr (posting ok)'
NNTP_COMMAND: 'mode reader'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(106): '200 Bienvenue sur news.wanadoo.fr, le serveur de
news est disponible. - newsmaster@wanadoo.fr (posting ok)'
NNTP_COMMAND: 'date'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(18): '111 20041001151421'
NNTP_COMMAND: 'list overview.fmt'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(41): '215 Order of fields in overview database.'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(8): 'Subject:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(5): 'From:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(5): 'Date:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(11): 'Message-ID:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(11): 'References:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(6): 'Bytes:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(6): 'Lines:'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(9): 'Xref:full'
NNTP_STREAM_LINE(END)
g_f_i: fast 0 subscr 4 recursive 2 online 1 top ""
Thread 427d9bb0 >
Get folder info(0x82b87a0:nntp://news.wanadoo.fr/, '<null>') =
< 427d9bb0 >
g_f_i: fast 0 subscr 4 recursive 2 online 1 top ""
Thread 42fe6bb0 >

And nothing else happen (no network transfert), it just stays on "loading..."