Moving on to Miniflux, Minimalist and Opinionated Feed Reader

Wrote recently a blog post about Feedbin. Got some coverage on Twitter and some users criticized its feature to not to retain all data. I was okay with that but then someone pointed out there’s a self-hosted RSS software called Miniflux.

I absolutely love shout-outs like this:

As I used tt-rss earlier for years Miniflux got my attention as it’s actively developed open sourced software whereas tt-rss is practically abandoned. I loved the idea of fully free and open source RSS reader and on top of that there’s the ultra minimal approach that is so very close to my heart.

For these reasons only started the idea of it instantly hit me. Fetched the latest go and postgresql on my server and then got Miniflux from Fedora repository. The installation is super easy.

Installing Miniflux on Fedora 32

Although I use Fedora which is rpm-based, these instructions can be easily converted to debian based systems.

From Miniflux 2.0.29 at least Go version 1.16 is required. So install the freshest Go, follow the instructions for Linux:

rm -rf /usr/local/go && tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.16.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
go version

Make sure you have these in your ~/.bashrc:

# Golang
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export GOROOT=/usr/local/go

After adding them, restart terminal or run:

. ~/.bashrc

Install PostgreSQL:

sudo dnf install postgresql postgresql-server

Run initial setup:

sudo /usr/bin/postgresql-setup --initdb

Edit config:

sudo nano /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf

Ensure you can access to the database:

host all all ::1/128 md5
local all all md5
host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5
host all all 10.10.10.0/24 md5

Edit postgresql.conf config:

sudo nano /var/lib/pgsql/12/data/postgresql.conf

Ensure that we listen everything:

listen_addresses = '*'

Add PostgreSQL to firewall exceptions and restart services:

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=postgresql --permanent 
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
sudo service postgresql restart

Log in as postgres user.

sudo su - postgres

Create a hard password for user.

psql -c "alter user postgres with password 'StrongPassword'"

Create a hard password for user.

After this we can install Miniflux:

git clone https://github.com/miniflux/v2 miniflux
make miniflux
cd miniflux
make miniflux

Look up database migration guide on Miniflux documentation.

How it’s like? Why is it better than Feedbin?

It’s always best to really own your data. As a server guy installing things is not a problem – on the contrary, it’s the most fun thing to do.

It seems Miniflux supports all the same features than Feedbin and it’s way faster. Twitter users can be added via rss.app. Miniflux too has a Chrome notification extension. And a home screen app for Android.

What I like the most in Miniflux is that I can customize everything, even layout via CSS. This has lead – as always – me to create a better looking theme:

You can even add modify content, filter content, add rules with regex. This is a dream. Thanks to Twitter, I’m now Miniflux user. Sorry Feedbin, it is not you, it is me.

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