Liferea For Linux

Liferea is an open source news reader or news aggregator application that supports a wide range of news feeds and feed formats. It’s specifically designed for Linux machines. The application tries to fill the gap between other similar programs, by creating a fast, easy-to-install and easy to configure/use news aggregator solution for Linux operating systems.

The software is compatible with a wide range of feed formats, including RSS, RDF, CDF, Atom, OCS, and OPML. Both import and export operations are supported by Liferea. It includes filters to scrape websites or post-process feeds, supports enclosures (podcasting), and allows users to synchronize their feeds with the TheOldReader and TinyTinyRSS web-based news feed readers.

Liferea is a life saver app, as it provides the right news at the right time, exactly when you need them. However, it can also save your Internet bandwidth, simply by supporting feed specified update intervals, HTTP compression and etags. Another interesting feature is the multitude of feeds that are already implemented in the application, covering a vast amount of areas, including music blogs, comics, open source, podcasts, and other news sites.

It can display news from an entire category or from a single feed entry. Feeds can be organized in categories or single entries. When viewing an entry, the entire article is displayed by default, including the header image. You can search the entire news database for a specific keyword, change various aspects of a category or entry, modify the source type, change cache settings, or use a proxy. Pop-up notifications and system tray support are also implemented.

Being written in GTK+, it best fits in the GNOME or Xfce desktop environments. However, it can be used in any other open source window manager, as long as it supports GTK applications. When comparing Liferea with the RSSOwl, Akregator or Blam! news reader apps, we can immediately notice the complexity and the speed of this application. We strongly recommend to use Liferea for all your news feeds. It’s definitely a keeper!