RSS Part 9: Akregator

Akregator is the RSS client of KDE. The description on the homepage makes me chuckle, but I think it is probably worth a try.

Impressions

I prefer to try out RSS clients in the system that I use to check RSS feeds so that I can accurately assess the performance, but Akregator has more dependencies that I am comfortable installing. That is a significant drawback for anybody who is not using KDE: installing it brings along a fair chunk of the KDE ecosystem.

I booted a Debian Live image with KDE in a VM to try it out, but the VM had a tiny resolution and would not let me configure a different resolution. After lots of searching and unsuccessful attempts to resolve the issue, I gave up and installed KDE so that I could install the guest editions and reboot. After updating the software, I confirmed that I am running Akregator 5.15.3 (20.08.3) but am not sure what the current version is since the homepage has no version information and searches did not immediately locate a source repository or CHANGELOG.

When first running the program, it loads seven example feeds organized into a hierarchy. This serves as good documentation by example. I figured that it would be easy to remove all of the example feeds by right-clicking on the top folders and selecting Delete Folder in the popup menu, but this did not work for me! I confirm deletion, and it does nothing! There are no error messages or any other clues about what might be going wrong. I tried deleting a feed by right-clicking the feed and selecting Delete Feed in the popup menu, and it also fails. I tried deleting all items in a feed and then deleting the feed. I have not found an item that I have been unable to delete. Some feeds can be deleted while others cannot. Similarly, some folders can be deleted while others cannot. I exited the software and then ran it again to see if that might help. I was able to delete some of the folders that would not delete before, but I am still unable to delete one folder. As a user, I find this very frustrating and would normally give up on the software at this point. The only reason that I continue is that I am writing a blog entry about it.

I imported my OPML file but there are many issues! The hierarchy of folders loaded, but there are many nodes in the tree that have no title and cannot be selected. These empty nodes thankfully disappeared when I restarted the program.

As with QuiteRSS and Liferea, the folders and feeds are in arbitrary order, but they can be sorted using drag-and-drop. There is no sort functionality like Liferea has. Feeds are displayed as well, which is nice. As with QuiteRSS and Liferea, feed titles default to the those specified in the feeds, but users can set a better name when desired.

The UI seemed very slow when initially fetching the feeds, but running the software within a VM is likely a significant factor. Subsequent updates are sufficiently fast.

I noticed that some feed items that are displayed do not have titles and have dates that are in the far future. I figured it was another issue with Akregator, but I downloaded the feed and inspected it in Vim to confirm. The feed included some items with empty titles and nonsense dates, so it was not an Akregator issue after all! (I opened QuiteRSS to see what it does, and it displays the items with title “(no title)” and the nonsense dates.) (It is the feed for a friend’s blog, so I sent a bug report.)

Unfortunately, Akregator does not have trash functionality. Without it, one must be much more careful about deleting items, greatly reducing the efficiency of feed processing.

By default, item links are available via the title as well as a link at the bottom of the item description titled “Complete Story.” (I am not a fan of this terminology. Also, feed items are called “articles.”) Links are opened in a new tab within Akregator by default, with very noticeable delays. By default, the button to close a tab is at the far right of the tab bar. I do not like this, probably just because I am so used to the way that Firefox (and pretty much all other software) puts the close button in the tab itself. Thankfully, there is an option to show the button on each tab. Closing a tab incurs a very long pause. I changed the configuration to use the external browser instead, and that works fine. The configuration allows you to configure different behavior for the left and middle mouse buttons, which is a nice feature.

Item links can be copied via right-clicking on the title or “Complete Story” link. Podcast enclosures are displayed in the header list, and URLs can be copied via a right click.

Item descriptions look fine. Japanese is displayed without issue, tables look fine, and images are displayed. The configuration allows you to select fonts, and the defaults look fine.

Akregator does not have options for enabling/disabling image loading, but it has an option for disabling JavaScript. There is an option to “verify URLs using Google’s Safe Browsing API” (disabled by default), an Adblock plugin (disabled by default), and a Do Not Track plugin (disabled by default). The software does not seem to have support for authenticated feeds.

I added the feed that Thunderbird refuses to load due to validation issues, and Akregator handles it without any problems.

Akregator has support for periodic checking. A global setting can be configured, and feeds can be configured with an override. This is almost as good as the Liferea design. Notifications are disabled by default.

Akregator stores its configuration and data according to the XDG specs: configuration is stored in ~/.config/akregatorrc and the cache is stored in ~/.cache/akregator. The cache is tiny, so I assume that feed content must be stored elsewhere.

My Client Requirements

How does Akregator measure up to my client requirements?

Akregator does not meet my essential requirements because of the major bugs in the UI. Not being able to delete some folders is extremely annoying. The empty tree nodes that appear when importing OPML files is not a huge issue because they disappear upon restart, but they do not inspire confidence that that software is up for a task as important as RSS feed processing. The performance in my test was quite bad, but I tested in a VM and do not know how much better it runs on bare metal.

Akregator allows configuration of fonts, and the defaults look fine. It has good support for multiple languages. HTML content is displayed fine, including images and tables.

Akregator allows me to organize feeds hierarchically, allowing me to optimize the order that I process them. The hierarchy is implemented much better than in Thunderbird. Unfortunately, there is no trash support. It can check feeds manually as well as periodically, with good usability for such configuration. Notifications are off by default.

I expected Akregator to be well polished and was surprised to have so many problems with it. I would not consider using it due to the bugs. Even if it worked as intended, the lack of trash functionality would hurt my efficiency too much.