RSS Owl: a new feedreader

Yes, this is another geek post. Deal with it.

In my quest to play with Ubuntu Linux, I’ve had to look around for some alternatives to the software I use in Windows.  Firefox, Opera, and Thunderbird all have Linux versions and work like a charm, fortunately, but I had some difficulty finding a feedreader I liked. Feedreaders are a critical tool for bloggers, who have to monitor dozens of different newspapers, wire services, and blogs and keep up to the moment on all of them.  Without a reliable and flexible feedreader, I’d be sunk.

I tried using Newsfox, the embedded RSS feedreader from Firefox, but it didn’t quite have the flexibility I liked in timing, retention, and grouping.  Akregator, Newsgator and Liferea had their good points, but having been spoiled by Sharpreader and then Omea, both of them fell short on options as well.  I’ve used Google Reader before, and while that helps in making the reader portable, it has even less control on order, grouping, and retention — as it should as a hosted service.

Eventually, I discovered RSS Owl, but I could never figure out how to get it to run in Linux.  It has a Linux version but no installer package, and I’m not adept enough at Ubuntu to figure out how to get it to run.  Instead, I installed it on my Windows machine to see whether it would make a suitable substitute for Omea.  I’ve had problems with corruption in the Omea database, causing entries to get corrupted, and repeated rebuilds and fixes just haven’t resolved the problem.

RSS Owl loads faster, cleaner, and has almost all of the options I like in Omea.  It also highlights updated posts, not just new entries, so I can tell when bloggers have edited existing entries.  It plays Java scripts in the windows, allowing me to see video clips without having to open pages in the browser.  And so far, at least, I haven’t seen a hint of corruption in the files as I have with Omea.

I’m going to keep using RSS Owl until it proves itself unworthy.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure out how to load it in Ubuntu, where I needed it in the first place.