I used to adore the Feedbro extension for Firefox - until I learned that browser extensions are a privacy concern and stopped using them. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find anything similar for the Linux desktop. I just can’t seem to find the ‘sweet spot’ with all the readers I’ve tried. Some are bloated with features and complicated configurations that I will never use. Others are too simplistic. Still others haven’t seen an update in years. I feel like this is an impossible quest.
The readers I have tried (and discarded):
- Liferea
- RSS Guard
- News Flash
- Feeds
- Feed Deck
- Feed Flow
- Akregator
- Thunderbird
- Raven Reader
Here are the features I need:
- FOSS (obviously)
- Import/export OPML
- Scale the size of the UI and all text elements
- RSS feed discovery
- Fetch full articles
- Configure update interval
- Privacy-conscious
- Desktop only (I am currently unable to self-host)
Things that would be nice, but I can live without if I have to:
- Dark mode
- An uncluttered, two-column display
That’s about it. Now tell me that I am asking too much and there’s no hope for me. :D
If your desktop is not very old with very little RAM, you could self-host FreshRSS on your desktop.
Or miniflux if it is. It’s efficient, fast, and I like the interface better.
Is this something that a complete newbie would be able to do?
For FreshRSS, if you want to run the development version on localhost:
apt update && apt install build-essential gitInstall Docker: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/
Clone FreshRSS repository, run
make startand finish the installation: https://freshrss.github.io/FreshRSS/en/developers/02_First_steps.htmlThat seems simple enough. I’ll give it a shot. Much appreciated!