RSS Part 19: Current Thoughts

This blog entry expresses my current thoughts on RSS clients, now that I am looking for a new one (again).

QuiteRSS

QuiteRSS has been working well for me, so I am pretty disappointed to learn that it is dead. While writing this blog entry, I discovered that even the website is down, so I updated my links to point to the repository instead.

I am currently using Arch Linux for my daily driver, and somebody patched (deprecated) Qt Webkit to work with the new release of ICU. I needed to remove QuiteRSS and Qt Webkit and then reinstall them after upgrading the system, but QuiteRSS is working for me again. It is of course still available on many distributions. To continue the anthropomorphization, it is like an animated corpse that is still getting work done despite being dead for years and having hundreds of security vulnerabilities.

It might be worthwhile for somebody to create an AppImage for the final version (0.19.4) so that users have a way to continue using it (while searching for a replacement) if/when their distribution no longer runs it. It has many dependencies that might make this difficult, but one for an older version shows that it is possible.

Another option is to use Nix, which is quite adept at deploying vulnerable software. (cough) I wonder what the size of the closure for quiterss is…

Promising Clients

I am now looking for a new RSS client that meets my client requirements. As described in my client reflections, I (still) prefer to use a native application, not a web client. I do not check RSS feeds continually, and I dislike distracting notifications. I check RSS at certain times during the day, and I prefer to fetch feeds at that time so that they are current. Native applications that only run at those times are a good match for my use case.

I plan on trying out RSS Guard again. The author is doing a great job at maintaining the project. He asked if I could create some GitHub issues for any bugs that I notice. I have not had time to do so yet, but I plan on doing so when I try it out again.

I also plan on trying out Liferea again. Perhaps I can change my deletion-based workflow in order to use this software? It is worth a try.

After using QuiteRSS for more than two and a half years, it might be painful to go back to Thunderbird. Casual observation indicates that both the UI and UX has gotten worse over the years, IMHO. I plan on trying it out again, however.

I occasionally read about new RSS clients. Just today, I saw a Show HN post about a new web-based client called Fusion. While it looks like an interesting project, the screenshot indicates that it would probably not provide efficient usage with hundreds of feeds.

Various Other Thoughts

Rachel Kroll published So many feed readers, so many bizarre behaviors earlier this week, describing some poor RSS client behavior as well as some features that she wishes RSS clients had. It is an interesting read.

It seems like many RSS clients try to provide a stream of posts/notifications like Mastodon or X (formerly Twitter). Checking an RSS feed that rarely updates every ten minutes is not a great design, especially when the TTL and other metadata is being ignored. RSS works great for my use case, where I check for updates at specific times, but something like WebSub (formally PubSubHubbub) would probably work better for people who like such continuous streams. Perhaps I should look into adding support for WebSub to this website when I can find the time.

The demise of QuiteRSS brings the difficulty of software maintenance to mind. In particular, dependencies often incur a high cost. Most difficulties in maintenance of my own projects are caused by the lack of maintenance of dependencies. Thinking about RSS clients in particular, I would be interested in finding a robust client that minimizes dependencies. I need a client that makes it easy to organize and manage many feeds as well as efficiently filter entries. I do not need my RSS client to act like a web browser, as opening non-textual content in a separate web browser is fine. I wonder if I am part of a small minority or if there are many others who prefer to use RSS like this.