Newsboat is a fork of newsbeuter, a console-based RSS reader for UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS. Unlike newsbeuter, newsboat is actively under development, while development of newsbeuter has ceased.
Compared to other slow, huge, memory-intensive RSS feed readers, Newsboat is the best choice for anyone looking for a simple , nimble, and fast RSS reader that can be managed entirely via the keyboard.
The project code is written in C++ using libraries in the Rust language distributed under the MIT license.
Among the features that stand out about Newsboat, we can find:
- Supports RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom
- Possibility of downloading podcasts
- Keyboard control with the ability to define your own key combinations
- Find all uploaded feeds
- The ability to classify your subscriptions using a flexible tag system
- The ability to add an arbitrary data source using a flexible system of filters and plugins
- Ability to create metachannels using a powerful query language
- Ability to sync newsboat with an account at bloglines.com
- Import and export of OPML subscriptions
- The ability to customize and override the colors of all elements of the interface;
- Ability to sync feeds with Google Reader.
About the new version of Newsboat 2.17
Newsboat is currently in version 2.17, which was recently released and adds new features.
Among the main new features highlighted in this version is the work done to improve support for Linux and FreeBSD platforms, as several errors resulting in crashes or memory leaks were corrected.
In addition, documentation was added for the "macro-prefix" option , and above all, an important function, which is the "save-all" function to save all articles in the feed.
Another addition in this new version is that of the "dirbrowser-title-format" setting used in the dialog called during "save-all".
Also noteworthy is the ability to assign hotkeys in the context of the dialog generated by "save-all".
Added "selecttag-format" option to determine the appearance of the "Select tag" dialog.
How to install the Newsboat RSS reader on Linux?
For those interested in using or testing this RSS CLI reader on their systems, you can do so by following the instructions below.
It is important to mention that this new version of Newsboat has not yet been included in the repositories of the main Linux distributions, so those who want to install it from their system's official channels will have to wait a few days.
What can be done at this time is to download the application's source code and compile it on the system.
To do this, they will need to open a terminal and run the following command:
git clone git://github.com/newsboat/newsboat.git
And the compilation is done with:
make
sudo make install
Now for those who want to wait, when the new version is available, can perform the installation by running any of the following commands, depending on your distro.
For those who use Arch Linux and derivatives:
sudo pacman -S newsboat
Whereas for Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint or derivatives of these
sudo apt-get install newsboat
In the case of Fedora:
sudo dnf instalar newsboat
Finally , for the rest of the Linux distributions that support Snap packages, you can perform the installation with the following command:
sudo snap install newsboat
Basic use of Newsboat
Using Newsboat is quite simple ; you just need to get used to its way of working.
In a terminal, all we have to do is type the command:
newsboat -h
To know the options it offers us.
Additionally, to add the feeds, they are saved within a file. This file must be created in the following path:
nano ~/.newsboat/urls
They can close with Ctrl + O and exit with Ctrl + X
You can edit this file with your preferred text editor. Within the file, place the feeds you want to be displayed on Newsboat on each line, as follows:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/desdelinuxweb
Finally, to read the feeds, just execute the following command in the terminal:
newsboat