Missing pieces

As I mainly use FreeBSD, two of these programs don't work with Windows at all. Though Google finds few reviews for you, if you want to find more readers that work in Windows. But for the rest of us, here's review of few free RSS readers. And if you're wondering what RSS is, I wrote post about it some time ago.

This is not going to be comprehensive list of all readers, I have left some readers out that didn't seem to have features I want, so I haven't even tried them out. I use keyboard heavily and go through number of feeds daily, so that affects reviews too.

Let's start with the integrated readers

Opera

Operas implementation is extension to the integrated M2 mail client, though there's separate menu for feeds now. That's about only feature that isn't used in reading mails too.

It's possible to sort feeds to different categories via mail filters, but that's lot of work. Though I must admit, it's quite flexible solution once its working. Keyboard navigation works nicely, though accessing mail filters through panel is not as easy as it could be, but that's the price to pay for multipurpose panel. So the actual downside is that there's no way to render feeds as a page, only way is to browse one item at a time.

Opera Mini has already that feature (though it's only way that doing it makes sense with mobile phone), so maybe there's hope for Operas feed reader in the future. Opera is still great for less frequently updated feeds.

Browser and feed reader go so well together, but once the flood of new feed items really starts, there has to be some way to skim through the items more quickly. So, as a feed reader it has room for improvement and that was why I started looking for other choices.

Firefox

I would guess that Firefox has most widely used feed reader among Linux users. Though its default implementation is bit odd. It shows feed items as bookmarks and calls then Live Bookmarks. I'm not so happy with that kind of implementation as I don't want to miss anything. In addition, it's not possible to mark items as read, though at least it's possible to open all items at once. I'm sure almost everything is possible with add-ons and I think I have seen feed reader add-ons.

That's not the best part though. Firefox lets you choose to subscribe with any program and has web services as Google Reader in the list too. In addition, it shows preview of the feed and that's handy as sometimes it's hard to guess what's included in the feed without subscribing to it.

Default reader might not be good enough for everybody, but at least Firefox makes it easy to use any other reader.

Akregator

Akregator is the official KDE feed reader. So no Windows version right now, but that might change. It embeds Konqueror, so some of its features work when rendering feeds as a page, namely shortcut keys for links (press ctrl to see them). Too bad shortcut keys for links run out quickly. Another thing that is missing is shortcut for selecting next folder with unread items

Categories work as they should. Drag and drop works and arranging feeds to categories doesn't take much time. Even subfolders are possible, so there's not really complaints about that. Only nitpicking could be that it's not possible to add tags to feeds, but right now I'm happy with working categories.

Most annoying feature is that by default Akregator switches mode to all messages, so browsing feeds takes some time as rendering page with many items takes some time. And there's no way to tell which items are unread, so only way is to swithch back to mode that shows unread items. Though there is option (look under advanced in Akregators preferences) that prevents Akregator from resetting the mode each time feed is changed, so it's much faster to browse feeds when it shows always just unread items.

Akregator has tabbed interface, so if you want to read the actual articles straight from Akregator (with the embedded Konqueror), it's possible in separate tab.

As for default feeds (that seem to be mandatory feature for separate RSS feed reader), Akregator has some KDE and Akregator related feeds.

Liferea

Liferea seems to be featurewise good reader. It has easy way to categorise feeds and can render the feeds as a page and has support for two different rendering engines (GTKHTML and Gecko if you're interested in technical details). Only thing I'm missing is way to open links with keyboard, other shortcuts seem to be available.

When rendering feeds as page, feed items are bit more stylized than for example in Akregator. Every item has feeds logo in item headline, so when browsing multiple feeds simultaneously, it's easy to see which feed the item is from.

Though there are some flaws. I didn't see any way to display only unread items. Maybe rendering page with 100 items take that long with faster computer, but with slower it clearly hurts. But at least read items are clearly marked in rendered page too.

I prefer Akregator bit more right now, but Liferea doesn't seem to be bad choice, though I got it to crash once. It didn't see be tolerant for my impatience and decided to quit when it received too many commands that it had no time to fulfill. Though it might not happen to you, I'm not even sure if I can make it happen again.

Liferea has some Linux and open source related feeds as default feeds, which is not bad choice to get you addicted.

RSSOwl

RSSOwl is feed reader written in Java. It works with Windows too. As for features, it seems to be serious about them. I'm not sure if I'm able to spot every single one. I managed to get it to render feeds as page and display it in external browser (if you want to read feeds from PDF file, that's possible too). I didn't get embedded browser to work as I don't have Mozilla installed and Firefox didn't work. Windows users can use Internet Explorer.

One of the features is autodetecting feeds from web page, it even has separate feed search. I'm not sure how it works, but I managed to find few feeds with it.

One interesting feature that I didn't try out is AmphetaRate integration. It's service that lets you rate feed items and then tries to give you better articles based on your taste.

There seems to be keyboard for most important functions, though few of them are not defined by default.

By default it has huge amount of feeds. Keeping up to date with every single one of them could take some time.

For managing so many feeds, it's nice to be able to update just one folder. It took some time to realise, that it's named "reload favorites". I guess I had made that category favorite earlier.

There seems to be something going on with these favorites. It seems like that it's possible to dump every possible feed in RSSOwl and then mark favorites and keep reading those. Default actions seem to support that conclusion, no feeds are updated automatically, but it's possible to make RSSOwl do that for some feeds in addition to all favorite feeds.

RSSOwl seems to be good enough reader, though problems with embedded browser don't make it attractive alternative right now and U'm too lazy to fix it right now. Though using Opera to render the page is interesting idea.

Some kind of conclusion

I can't say this is completely fair review, as I have mainly been using Akregator now and I know more about its quirks (and of course Operas). Your way of using RSS feed reader might be completely different. Browsers are good at integration, they're already available if you're using that particular browser, so it's easy to start using them. Though separate readers are more ambitious. All three separate readers seem to be trying to be the best reader around. Akregator seems to get the most important things right, but Liferea displays rendered feed page nicer. RSSOwl tries really to be stand alone reader which doesn't need help from browser for subscribing to feeds.

Feeds are useful in other programs too. For example Amarok can get podcasts from RSS feeds. And there should be some programs to download TV shows, for example PenguinTV.

If Microsoft is making your life too difficult with all those anti-piracy checks in MS Office, there's a way out. Or maybe it's just too expensive. No matter what's the reason, there are few free alternatives. Most popular one is OpenOffice.org and bit less known is Abiword (though it's just word processor, not complete office suite). For Linux users out there, there's also KOffice. It's not impossible that it has Windows version too some day. All three support more or less MS Office document formats, OpenOffice does it even better in some cases.

I don't have much daily use for word processors, but I'll try my best to give some kind of idea what to expect.

Let's start with simplest one, Abiword. It's most lightweight of these suites. It's more or less compatible with Microsoft Word documents, OpenDocument support is not that good yet though. But styles are supported and some functionality can be added with plugins, for example OpenDocument support is implemented as a plugin. Too bad it's not clearly ready yet. There seems to be also ability to get text from various sources such as databases and command line interface. I haven't tried those myself though.

OpenOffice.org is bit on the heavy side, though it's more than full office suite. It has word processor, spreadsheet, mathematical function creation, presentation tool, drawing tool and database (more like Microsoft Access than MySQL). File format support is good, or at least where it counts. Presentation tool is good enough, though themes don't look very impressive. That's about all that I have tested. There are also some symbols for making flow charts, if you have sudden need to make one and can't find tool to make them anywhere.

If OpenOffice.org had impressive list of features, KOffice has even some more. Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, databases, flowcharts, vector and pixel graphics (looks more like Photoshop than Gimp), project management, charts, formulas and business reports.

So in overall, Abiword is good for quick things where compatibility with existing formats is not crucial. OpenOffice is more serious replacement for complete Microsoft Office suite. I haven't used KOffice, (or word processor part of it, KWord), but I have heard that it's sort of crossover between desktop publishing and word processing program. But trying these out doesn't cost anything, so it doesn't hurt to try them all and use what seems to suit best.

Good review about OpenOffice, Microsoft Word 2007 and Wordperfect can be found here.

PS: between this and last post my total number of visitors reached 10000. Thank you whoever you are, 50th post isn't far too. I wonder what it will be about.

I have posted previously about free videos, but I have forgotten free media players. Windows Media Player is the default, but it's far from perfect. If you're looking for alternatives, there are few good applications, but some of them install spyware. Luckily there's some open source alternatives available.

Another problem is codecs. There are some codecpacks available, but quality is often bad. Some players include alternative implementation of most of the codecs, so there's not so much need to install codecpacks.

There are also installer for two popular codecs without the bundled players, Quicktime and Real. Though there are some players that include those codecs too in separate package which includes also number of other codecs.

Media Player Classic is made to look like mediaplayer from Windows 98. Not necessarily pretty, but functional enough. It doesn't have proper homepage though.

VLC is streaming server and video player. Pretty good support for different codecs and subtitles. Preferences include quite extensive number of options. Playlist is also available.

One nice feature is also support for different interaces. It can be controlled for example from web browser. I have not found yet much use for that though.

Google Video Player is also based on it, but it's crippled version. Almost every codec is removed and for a good reason: codec licenses are not cheap.

Last one is MPlayer. Windows version doesn't have graphical user interface, though who needs that anyway . Actual problem is that Windows doesn't have decent commandline. You can avoid using command line by associating media files to MPlayer, but if you need to use some command line options to tweak some settings, it's good idea to add MPlayers directory to path.

It takes some time to get used to it learning all necessary keyboard shortcuts, but after that it's excelent video player.

Linux has also such players as Xine and Totem.