How to Install Newsboat RSS Feed Reader on Linux

Wondering how to install Newsboat RSS Feed Reader on Linux?

Are you a regular internet surfer for information or news regarding your favorite topics? Now imagine if you were able to see your favorite blogs and favorite news right on the Linux command terminal window. 

The advantage of having this feature is you don’t have to quit the command terminal environment and open an internet browser to consume that content. You can work and relax in the same environment without opening and closing windows or sessions.

This can be done by installing an RSS feed reader application on your Linux computer. One of the best feed reader applications is the Newsboat feed reader application. There are two types of feed reader applications depending on which mode they give the feed updates, CLI or GUI.

Newsboat is a CLI feed reader application. If you are using Linux and interested in learning how to install Newsboat RSS feed reader, then you are at the right place as we will be looking at the steps you need to take to install it. 

So, without further fuss, let’s get started!

Steps to Install Newsboat.

The steps and commands you will be following are easy. We will be installing Newsboat on Ubuntu and providing further commands to help you install the application in case you use a distro other than Ubuntu. Follow these steps.

1. Open the Command Terminal.
2. Enter the following command to update the system repositories to get the latest versions of all the applications in the Ubuntu repositories. You can use the update commands for your respective Linux distribution.

$ sudo apt-get update

Or,

$ sudo apt update

3. Next, install Newsboat using the following commands.
4. For Ubuntu,

$ sudo apt install newsboat

For Fedora,

$ sudo dnf install newsboat

For Arch Linux,

  $ sudo pacman -S newsboat

5. If you are using other distributions, you can use snapcraft to install Newsboat. 

These were the steps on how to install the Newsboat RSS feed reader on different Linux distributions.

How to Use the Newsboat Applications?

After you have installed Newsboat, the next step is to learn how to use it. Follow these steps, and you will learn the basics.

1. Open the Command Terminal.
2. Run the following command. 

$ newsboat

3. You should see a blank screen; this is because when you run the command mentioned above, it queries the Terminal to search for the URLs we instructed newsboat to get the feeds and updates from. To add the URLs, use the following command. 

$ sudo /home/user/.newsboat/urls

4. The “user” in the command above will be replaced by the username you have set for your system. The command opens a file that can be edited. Add the URLs of the websites from which you want the updates, and then save the file.
5. Now, run the command mentioned in step 2.
6. At first, you will see only the name of the websites you have mentioned in the URL file without any feeds. This can be countered by pressing “Shift + r”. 
7. You will have a list of all the websites and their feeds. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the desired website and then press “enter”. You should see the list of unread feeds of the websites on your Terminal screen.
8. There is also the provision to search for a particular article from any website. Just press “‘/”. This should open a search tab at the bottom of the screen. Enter the specific keywords of the article you want to search. If it exists, it should pop up, and then you can access it. 
9. Newsboat is not configured to auto-refresh as soon as you access it. You can choose to set it on auto-refresh. Open the configuration file using the following command.

$ sudo /home/user/.newsboat/config

Next, enter the following lines in it and then save it. 

$ refresh-on-startup yes

10. You can also instruct the application to remove all the articles you have already read from the initial feed you get on the Terminal screen. Again open the configuration file using the following command.

$  sudo /home/user/.newsboat/config

11. Now, add the following lines to the file and save it. 

$ show-read-feeds no

These were the basic steps on how to use the Newsboat RSS feed reader application. 

Uninstalling Newsboat.

To uninstall the newsboat application, you can use the $remove, and $purge commands in the following ways. 

$ sudo rm newsboat

Or 

$ sudo purge newsboat

As we have covered Newsboat, let’s talk about the Wine application. Back when Linux was first released, it lacked many of the applications that made Windows so popular. For example, the different office applications. 

To counter this deficiency, different applications were introduced to work as emulators or virtual systems. You could use those applications to use Windows over the Linux-based operating system. Wine was one of the most popular applications that came forward at that time. 

Wine has slowly gained popularity since then and has arguably become the go-to application for a Windows environment on a Linux system. Although Linux has improved massively by adding its own sets of applications, Wine still offers a useful alternative. 

If you want a guide to help you install Wine on Linux, then click on this Wine link. It will take you to an article that shows you all the steps and also provides other useful information regarding the application. 

This was an article on how to install Newsboat RSS feed reader applications on your respective Linux systems. We looked at what is the application itself and the steps you need to follow to install it successfully. 

Moreover, we also gave you a guide on how to use the application and make basic configurations of the application, so you utilize it to its full potential. The application is highly useful, and we are sure you can greatly benefit from it while working on the Linux terminal.

If this guide helped you, please share it. 🙂