I need an RSS Feed reader. I would definitely like to use some web based tool, but currently no bloglines, Google reader or any other feed aggregator satisfies me. I need something with a very simple user interface, little or no advance features and rock solid support for all type of feeds. After looking around for sometime I shortlisted these four feed readers.
- Akregator
- Blam
- Liferea
- Straw
Akregator is great but it is made for KDE not for Gnome. I liked it a lot when I was testing Kubuntu but KDE is not my kind of environment and using akregator on Gnome is slow and you need to fetch lots of other kdelibs.
Liferea is what people consider the best feed reader available on Ubuntu Linux. I do not agree with them. I added an RSS 0.92 feed and liferea didn’t display it according to the post’s publishing time. Blam displays the same feed correctly. Liferea beats Blam with its system tray icon and support for integrated browsing in tabs, just like akregator. It also has folders to organize your news feeds. It has a simple user friendly interface and the people behind this project are so nice that they have links to other RSS feed readers for Linux, right there on the front page of Liferea project. Followed the link to Straw I decided to install it.
Straw is similar to Blam. It is simple, easy to use and cute. It also has support for Categories. But it does not allow you to add a category while subscribing a new feed. You will have to select the feed later and then select categories. These categories are defined in preferences. Not a very usable approach.
I really want to use Blam because it displays my feeds correctly, but I also want to use Liferea because it has a system tray icon, folders and tabbed browser integration. I guess I will have to compromise on how Liferea displays one feed.
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