FreshRSS – A free, self-hostable aggregator | Hacker News Reader

FreshRSS – A free, self-hostable aggregator

freshrss.org

117 pointsJaruzel30 comments

I was a TTRSS user, but it only caused me trouble. Threw all kinds of strange errors at unexpected times. I don't know how many times it died on me after an upgrade.

About 1 ½ ago I switched to FreshRSS and it has been a marvelous experience. Zero trouble, zero adminstrative burden. Self-hosted bliss. Best of all is the fact that it uses a flat file DB so it can easily be backed up, moved around and migrated. Can not recommend it enough. Also, it's PHP, so works on any cheap shared hosting. That's how I use it.

>Best of all is the fact that it uses a flat file DB so it can easily be backed up, moved around and migrated. Can not recommend it enough. Also, it's PHP, so works on any cheap shared hosting. That's how I use it.

I've also been running my own FreshRSS instance for a few years now and this was the deciding factor for me. PHP+SQLite pretty much guarantees that any "toaster connected to the internet" would be able to serve it.

Even now that I'm using a slightly more powerful server, I don't want to run a dedicated Postgres just to store some personal RSS feeds. I know I can put everything on a docker and pretend it's not there, but that's just hiding a detail that's going to bite back when I need to backup my data or change servers.

I wish that more self-hosted applications would support SQLite out of the box.

Use docker compose and mount volumes, move the folder move the service

I mention this frequently but an alternative is https://miniflux.app/ - it’s easy to self host, fast and written in Go. It also syncs with every RSS app that supports the Fever API. It’s one of my favorite self hosted tools.

I love Miniflux and have just started using the Instapaper integration. I am still yet to find a good Fever client for Android unfortunately, any suggestions?

I'm another happy "customer".

Running it on a bare-bones ArchLinux installation has barely any maintenance.

You know what "self hosts" and doesn't require this excess web hosting and database baggage? Native RSS reader applications.

You can't seamlessly use native RSS app across your home, work computers and mobile. P.S.: It uses fairly standard LAMP stack. Put it in a docker or qemu if you don't want to "pollute" your machine.

You can. I do. Synchronization of read status between devices is a matter of taste. Without it it's as easy as running a native RSS reader (and it doesn't even have to be the same one!) on each computer. It's easy with opml export to keep the subscriptions the same when you do add or remove on a device.

>Put it in a docker or qemu

I'm trying to avoid inserting extra abstraction layers (browserOS on top of OS) in the first place. Adding more just to contain the needless complexity of the separate webserver+database isn't my jam.

I guess your RSS reading habits are quite different from those of me and other people that are the target audience for these kinds of self-hosted solutions. Not having read status synced across my devices is not an option, I might just as well use only one device in that case.

That's right. The computer is there to automate things for us, and having to deal with the same, already read articles manually on multiple devices is inconvenient.

Simply read RSS/Atom via mail (Rss2Email, for instance, there are few others) and simply have your mail synchronized as usual via IMAP. No need of a LAMP stack.

What's really inconvienient is having to run an extra webserver and database 24/7 and keeping it all secure and up to date. Seeing a RSS entry twice is barely noticible.

Simply use email (eg. RSS2Email), you get your feeds sync-ed via standard IMAP without needing a AMP stack + relative webapps.

Are there native RSS apps on iOS that don't simply connect to some "cloud service"? Apps that actually download the RSS or Atom file and save all data locally?

Because the first n (for large n) apps on the AppStore cannot do that.

Most of them offer that as an alternative as well, yes. For example Reeder (http://reederapp.com/ios/), one of the most prominent RSS apps for iOS.

But you need synchronization between devices if you read RSS on mutiple devices and don't want to read the same thing which you have already read on an other device.

Personally I prefer RSS2Email, so I have a good single place to read anything and a good storage and classifications software to save posts I like.

notmuch-emacs + a good maildir sync solution (like MBSync, OfflineIMAP etc) are far superior IMVHO than any feedreader/podcatcher.

This looks fantastic. Looking forward to giving this a go over Docker.

If the authors are reading.. I'm not one to suggest JS easily, but I found it a bit weird and unexpected that clicking through a single "category" was seamless, but selecting something on the left side it did a full page reload. Might be my slow connection right now that I noticed it so much, though.

It also hijacks space button. I usually use it to pgdn, but in FreshRSS it opens currently selected article. Please make the keyboard shortcuts configurable, especially if you are changing the standard ones.

Yes, this is my only problem with FreshRSS for the rest it is everything I want from a RSS reader. It's great!

I've been using this for about a month now, with the Firefox add-on for checking it on my desktop, and the FeedMe app for using it on Android.

Works well, I moved away from Tiny Tiny RSS to this and am pretty satisfied.

Why did you make the switch? TTRSS seems to be the golden standard among self-hosters (at least as far as I see)

My experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099123

To save others trouble: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.seazon.fee...

There's a fair amount of apps in the Play Store named "FeedMe".

Those permissions though... I'd rather use an RSS Reader that doesn't access my camera, look at my pictures, control my wifi, and look and my call information.

I have had zero problems with Tiny Tiny RSS staying updated via Git. Love seeing people using RSS no matter what you prefer. The demo install did not seem as seem as smooth at Tiny Tiny RSS.

Has anyone compared this to Selfoss? It uses a similar stack and I've been using it for a while with good results

Great! Could you add a GitHub button to the top menu bar next to the RSS & Twitter buttons?

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