New post: Software Review: FreshRSS

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