How To Use The Liferea RSS Reader On Linux

Looking for a good RSS reader app for your Linux desktop? Consider checking out the Liferea RSS reader. It’s a blazing fast, easy to use RSS reader app with a simple UI.

In this tutorial, we’ll go over how to download the program through your package manager, install and get it working on Linux. Additionally, we’ll go over how to subscribe to RSS feeds and update them too.

Install Liferea RSS Reader

Liferea is a popular RSS reading application, so many Linux distributions carry it in their software repositories. To install it, launch a terminal window and follow the instructions that relate to your operating system.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install liferea

Debian

sudo apt-get install liferea

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users can install Liferea directly from the software repositories. However, the program is in the “Extra” software repository, so be sure to enable it in your Pacman configuration file. To enable it, open pacman.conf in Nano.

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

Scroll through the configuration file and look for “Extra.” Delete the # symbol in front of the “Extra” line, and all lines directly underneath it. Then, save the configuration file with Ctrl + O, and exit Nano with Ctrl + X.

Update Pacman to enable the Extra repo:

sudo pacman -Syyuu

Finally, install Liferea with the following command.

sudo pacman -S liferea

Fedora

sudo dnf install liferea

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install liferea

Generic Linux Source Instructions

Linux users looking to use the Liferea RSS reader app on a lesser-known distribution won’t be able to set it up it traditionally, by downloading a Debian or RPM package. There’s also no Flatpak or Snap package to speak of. Instead, if you want to make use of this excellent app on your desktop, downloading the universal binary release is the only way to go.

Luckily, the Liferea RSS application’s Linux release requires minimal code compilation. To grab the Linux version, open up a terminal and use the wget application to download it.

wget https://github.com/lwindolf/liferea/releases/download/v1.12.5/liferea-1.12.5a.tar.bz2

Using your Linux package manager, search, and install all required Liferea dependencies in the list below.

• gtk3
• libxml2
• libxslt
• sqlite3
• libwebkit4
• libjson-glib
• libgirepository1.0
• libpeas
• gsettings-desktop-schemas
• python3

With all the dependencies taken care of, execute the tar command and extract the release from the TarBZ2 archive file.

tar xvf liferea-1.12.5a.tar.bz2

Next, use the CD command to move your terminal session from the home directory to the newly extracted release folder.

cd ~/liferea-1.12.5a/

Run the configure script, and use it to generate the necessary compilation files. Using this script will also allow you to determine if all of the dependencies are set up and installed correctly.

./configure

If there are errors that appear in the output of the configuration script, you’ll need to re-install the dependencies and troubleshoot as to why the configure script isn’t running correctly. However, If the script runs successfully, everything is ready to go.

Liferea’s source code can be compiled by running the make command.

make

Compiling a program takes a long time, so let the make command run its course. When the code build is complete, install the application to your Linux PC by running the make install command.

sudo make install

Using Liferea

Liferea is a very straightforward application, and its primary objective is to deliver RSS-powered content to your Linux computer. Out of the box, it comes with some existing RSS subscriptions These subscriptions are in the “Example” folder and can differ, depending on what distribution you install the software on. To access these subscriptions, click on the title of the feed. Doing so will instantly load in unread items that you can click on and read.

If you’re not interested in these example feeds, right-click on “Example Feeds,” and click on “Delete” in the context menu that appears.

Alternatively, to delete individual subscriptions in the “Example Feeds” folder, highlight any sub-folder, right-click and select “Delete” in the menu.

Updating Feeds

Opening up the Liferea app should automatically refresh all of your RSS subscriptions. That said, if the application is already open, you may need to update manually. To update all of your existing RSS feeds, look to the top of the window and select the “Update All” button.

Want to update an individual RSS subscription instead, rather than your entire library of subscriptions? Find an RSS subscription in the sidebar, right-click on a feed and open up the right-click menu. Select the “Update” button, and your feeds will update.

Subscribe To Feeds

To subscribe to a new RSS feed in the Liferea app, copy the URL to your clipboard. Then, click the “New Subscription” button.

Selecting the “New Subscription” button in Liferea will open up a new window. In this window, press Ctrl + V to paste the RSS feed and click “OK.”

After adding your new RSS subscription, return to Liferea and look to the side-bar for your new subscription. Right-click on your new RSS subscription and select “Update.” As soon as the news feed updates, it’ll be possible to read updates from your subscription.

Read Full Bio

AddictiveTips Team

Latest from Author

Deploy SeaFile in Docker on Ubuntu Server How to install TeamSpeak5 on Chromebook