For Linux there are plenty of possible RSS feed readers. One of my favorite readers is Liferea. Liferea is a feed aggregator for Gtk/GNOME that is fast, stable, works with most feeds, and takes up very few precious CPU cycles. And Liferea offers numerous features other, simpler, RSS feed readers do not have. In this article you will be introduced to this outstanding aggregator tool for the Linux desktop.

Features

Liferea offers the following features:

• Easy subscription addition/management.
• Bookmark using sites like Zurpy.
• Fast.
• Easy to use email-like thread pane.
• Import/Export of feeds.
• Script manager.
• Subscribe to your Google mail feed.
• and much more!

Installation

Liferea is very simple to install on any modern Linux distribution. In Ubuntu 9.10 you can open up the Software Center, do a search for “liferea” (no quotes), and install. The same steps can be followed with Synaptic. If you are using a Fedora-like distribution you can open up a terminal and issue the command (as the root user):

yum install liferea

Once installed you will find the Liferea menu entry in your Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Using Liferea

Figure 1

When you first fire up Liferea (see Figure 1) you will notice a number of already configured feeds for your enjoyment. Reading an entry from one of the pre-configured feeds is simple:

1. Click on the feed from the right pane.
2. Click on a story in the upper right pane.
3. Read the story in the lower right pane.

If, within the story, there is a link or comments you want to read you only need click on the Comments link or the url link within the article. The nice thing about Liferea is that you can read the entire story from within the application, so no other application is necessary. You are not just given a snippet of the article to preview.

Adding a new feed source

Of course you will most likely want add your own feed sources. Liferea has made this simple as well. Follow these steps:

Figure 2

1. Click the “New Subscriptions” button.
2. Enter the address of the source in the resulting new window (see Figure 2).
3. Click OK

That’s it. Now you will have noticed the Advanced button in the New Subscription window. You will want to go to the advanced configuration options if you need to:

• Change the source type from URL to either Command or Local file.
• Use a proxy.
• Use a conversion filter.

Other than that, just entering the source address is all you need.

Google

As I mentioned earlier, you can also subscribe to your Google mail. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click the New Subscription button.
2. Enter https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom as the source.
3. Click OK.

When prompted enter your Google username/password. Once authenticated Liferea will download your Gmail as a feed.

If you want to add your Google Reader feeds you can do this as well. Follow these steps:

1. Right click an empty spot in the left pane and select New.
2. From the resulting menu select “New Source”.
3. From the Source Selection window choose Google Reader.
4. Click OK.
5. When prompted enter your Google account username and password.
6. Click OK.

The Google feed will automatically update for you, but might take a bit of time to update depending upon how many feeds you are subscribed to with Google Reader.

Final thoughts

Liferea is one of the best RSS solutions available for the Linux desktop. Not only is it easy to use, it’s flexible enough to satisfy even the more critical users.

Other additions and new features of FeedDemon 3 include a redesigned user interface, enhanced Twitter feed reading and replying, automatic hyperlinking, article sharing, performance improvements and tagging. The changelog lists dozens, if not hundreds of additional changes and additions to the RSS feed reader.

The interface of FeedDemon is divided into several levels. You got the header area with tools and options, the left sidebar with subscriptions, tags, watches and clippings, the main area that displays popular items on the start page, feed titles, excerpts or full articles once a feed or category has been selected.

Feed Demon can import feeds from various sources. It can import from an opml file or from external sources like Google Reader, Bloglines, RSS Bandit or Windows Common Feed List directly.

Windows users who are looking for an RSS feed reader for their operating system should definitely give FeedDemon 3 a try. The download is provided at the developer’s website. It is compatible with Windows XP or later.

FeedStitch offers multiple third-party ways of logging into the service including using Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Open ID and AOL. Once logged in it is possible to paste RSS feed urls into the form to add them into groups. Groups are made up of multiple RSS news feeds and other news sources and provide access to a single RSS news feed url or Json item.

The other news sources that can be added in addition to news feeds are Twitter (either by username or Twitter search), Flickr, Delicious, Github and Tumblr. A new url is created for each new group that gets created by the user. Each group can be accessed directly in the web browser or in a feed reader. It is also possible to customize the url in the form http://feedstitch.com/groupname/.

FeedStitch is a nice service for users who want to quickly combine multiple RSS feeds into one especially if they have an account at one of the services that can be used to log into FeedStitch.

It works by adding a bot as a contact in Skype. (I suppose it works the same way in MSN and Google Talk). Once the bot has been accepted as a contact it will add feed updates right into a private chat window displaying the usual summary and a link to the article on the original website.

Feeds can be added using the feed url of the feed or by exploring already existing feeds that other users have subscribed to. Feed delivery options can be modified to limit the amount of updated feeds at a time, set a delivery timeframe (great for work / sparetime), to send only the title, title and summary.

Lots of options at hand which makes Inezha, or how they call themselves Anothr, a valuable unique service that should appeal to many users. Instead of using the website interface users can communicate with the bot directly. Subscribing to feeds is possible by issuing the command “+ feed url” for instance.

The website was rather slow when I tested the service but since it is not necessary to use it at all after setting up an account and adding the bots to your Instant Messenger or Skype it is not a huge problem.

Feeds can be imported in the OPML format which is supported by many Feed readers including Netvibes and Google Reader.

Short time ago I found a nice online RSS aggregator called Rootly. Important thing is that you can customize your account very well. You can use their feed presets or even better insert your own feed addresses and create unique tabs. Rootly then collects all the news for you and displays them in a very clean and well styled interface.

You can choose in which tab your news will appear and the order of tabs too. I appreciate that this service mixes all news together and displays them on one page instead of dividing the feeds according to their source. I hope that in the future they’ll add at least one more option – the possibility to choose how many news you want to display on a single page.

And the best thing at the end – Rootly supports OpenID (read previous article for more info on that). Actually, when I found the service few weeks ago, I had some serious problems with logging in using OpenID among other minor troubles but at this time it looks like everything works fine already.

Rootly is not really an alternative if you are already using Netvibes for instance as your news aggregator. I’m basically using it at work because Netvibes has been banned there while Rootly has not. The interface of Rootly is not that intuitive and it takes a step longer to perform actions. Adding feeds for instance has to be done on a separate page while you can add them on the fly so to speak in Netvibes.