Hi there, you've probably heard of RSS feeds before, but it is such a hustle loading them into browser, getting bombarded by so many advertisements, non relevant pictures, suggestions, and by the time you start consuming content you were initially after, you kinda lose interest. If you hate Graphical User Interfaces (and Windows) as much as i do, you might want to follow along on this one.

Newsboat

Newsboat allows you to centralize, group, tag, view all of your RSS feeds, and much more!

Figure 1. Pressing lowercase <t> will apply tagging preview (if you configured it inside urls config file)

Figure 3. When new article gets published, it will apear first on the list

You can navigate both in vi and emacs modes, or reconfigure to your liking.

You can now just press ENTER and read the article. Sometimes, more then often, it happens that RSS feed will contain only brief introduction in to the article, but not full text, so in that case you will have to open it with browser by pressing lowercase O.

Yes sure you can use firefox, or whatever you prefer, BUT, this is where w3m kicks in, isn't it beautiful.

W3M

Released back in 1995, still maintained, w3m is a terminal based web browser.

Why would you want to use it? Well, its simple, it renders pure html, so there is no javascript included, which translates to NO ADS, open the article you were after, enjoy it, go to the next one.

You can basically do whatever you want, make bookmarks, switch tabs, etc... with ~0 load times while doing so and while searching the web.

You'd want to install w3m-img dependencies if you want to load pictures. It might vary up to your package manager, but dnf has it named w3m-img.

You can also combine it with mpv for instantly loading any video formats you want to follow on web, as well as listening to audio (podcasts, audiobooks).

Figure 5. Watch videos directly from newsboat RSS feed

HOWdy partner

dnf install -y newsboat w3m w3m-img xterm

Now you need to create file named 'urls' inside .newsboat directory already created under your /home/$USER directory, after that, populate it with RSS feed links you want to follow.

You can assign them tags, and display them with custom made names that will help you better distinguish between multiple feeds.

https://nikolazivkovic.me/rss/ TechBlogs "~bigfella"
https://youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<ID> YouTube "~FavContentCreator"

Make one more file named config, populate it with what you prefer.

browser "w3m %u"
auto-reload yes
reload-time 20
.....

A BONUS TIP:

Instead of opening xterm and executing newsboat, just make a custom shortcut.

Now you will be welcomed with RSS feed of this blogpost and full content straight into newsboat, so no need for w3m at least for reading my gibberish (if you want images loaded, you'll have to open in w3m - press o.)

I invite you all to look into w3m and newsboat deeper as it comes with bunch of possibilities, filters, functions - like html2rss to build your own RSS feeds where there is no one. You can configure everything to your liking, listen to audios, videos, in completely distraction free environment.

If you want me to make a more detailed post about loading videos, audios, decoding and performance issues i encountered, please don't be a stranger, holla at me, and I will reach out ASAP, with a straight howto.

DISCLAIMER

Make sure to subscribe and turn on notification bells for content creators you follow, and which content you consume.

Doing things this way COULD POTENTIALLY lower their revenue by 0.0000000000001% (I made up that percentage), so make sure to tip them via patreon, buymeacoffe, or whatever equivalent they have, to show your support and keep them motivated. (I am not talking about me, I'm helpless XD).

HAVE A WONDERFUL REST OF THE DAY

Thanks for stopping by,
Cheers,
bigfella