content/posts/freshrss/index.md

   1 ---
   2 title: "Software Review: FreshRSS"
   3 date: 2024-06-08T12:14:37+02:00
   4 ---
   5 Most RSS users start off with desktop readers such as Newsboat or Akregator in
   6 order to keep things simple. However, due to certain drawbacks of this approach
   7 *(which I will talk about below)* I have looked for an aggregator I can install
   8 on my VPS and use as such. After a bit of research, I have decided to go with
   9 [FreshRSS](https://freshrss.org/) and here I'll explain why I decided to ditch
  10 Akregator in the first place and why I chose FreshRSS.
  11
  12 ## What even is RSS?
  13 *If you're already initiated on this subject, feel free to skip to the next
  14 section.*
  15
  16 A practically universal use case for the Internet is reading various blogs and
  17 news. However, as your number of followed blog and news sites builds up, going
  18 through all of them looking for new content becomes a serious chore. To make
  19 things worse, many (generally news) sites are becoming increasingly bloated.
  20 *(Not just technologically, but also with garbage content!)*
  21
  22 RSS solves these issues beautifully. The idea is that each site has an XML
  23 document (called an **RSS feed**, or **feed** for short) which contains a list
  24 of the N latest posts on that website. You can add an arbitrary number of these
  25 feeds into your reader and it will automatically sync these at a specified
  26 interval, optionally notifying you of new content. This removes the chore of
  27 having to go through your followed sites manually, but it also works around the
  28 technological bloat issue as the feeds can only contain plain text or *(more
  29 common and still reasonable)* plain HTML. Finally, low-quality content can be
  30 much more easily ignored or straight up filtered from your reader.
  31
  32 Unfortunately, RSS has declined since its golden age in the 2000's with [Firefox
  33 dropping its own
  34 reader](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/feed-reader-replacements-firefox)
  35 and many people forgetting about RSS, however it persists on many sites (even
  36 big ones) and other readers continue to be actively developed.
  37
  38 ## What's the problem with traditional readers?
  39
  40 If you consume your feeds on multiple devices *(as most people, me included,
  41 probably do)* with a traditional reader, your feeds and other info on them (such
  42 as read and important markers) will not sync. Besides that, you might lose
  43 articles on high-volume feeds if you do not open your feed reader for a while
  44 (which might be just a few days) and the feed has a sufficiently low N.
  45
  46 The solution to these problems is to run your aggregator on a server. There
  47 exist public ones, but a far better solution would be to host your own. This is
  48 where FreshRSS comes in.
  49
  50 ## How to install it?
  51
  52 If you have Docker Compose, put something like this into a `docker-compose.yml`:
  53 ```yaml
  54 version: "3.8"
  55
  56 volumes:
  57   data:
  58   extensions:
  59
  60 services:
  61   freshrss:
  62     image: freshrss/freshrss:latest
  63     container_name: freshrss
  64     hostname: freshrss
  65     restart: unless-stopped
  66     ports:
  67       - "8181:80"
  68     logging:
  69       options:
  70         max-size: 10m
  71     volumes:
  72       - data:/var/www/FreshRSS/data
  73       - extensions:/var/www/FreshRSS/extensions
  74     environment:
  75       TZ: Europe/Zagreb
  76       CRON_MIN: '3,33'
  77 ```
  78 Then, configure your web server to point a subdomain or path to the respective
  79 port. Open the subdomain or path in your browser, do the initial setup and
  80 you're done. Add a few categories and feeds, then go through the settings and
  81 configure everything to your wishes.
  82
  83 Since FreshRSS is a PWA, you may "install" it using a Chromium-based browser
  84 *(which I do on Android)* or through the **Web Apps** program on a Linux Mint
  85 system.
  86
  87 ## How does it feel to use? Should I use it?
  88
  89 There's not that much to say. Adding feeds is as simple as on a traditional
  90 reader, all my feeds and starred articles sync between devices *(strictly
  91 speaking, they do not, but are fetched from the server)* and it overall behaves
  92 pretty much just like Akregator did excluding the issues.
  93
  94 If you only read feeds on one device and don't care about losing articles from
  95 big news sites here and there, you should probably stick with a traditional
  96 reader as that is obviously less complicated, probably a bit more secure, allows
  97 offline reading and so on. However, if your RSS experience is affected by one of
  98 the aforementioned issues, I can highly recommend FreshRSS as it's relatively
  99 simple to set up and does not otherwise try to be radically different just for
 100 the sake of it.