Linux repositories are chock full of interesting software that’s virtually all free to install and use, usually with a few keystrokes or the click of a button. The hardest part is figuring out what to install first.
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Akregator: Follow Your Favorite Sources
It’s no secret that the internet is getting harder to navigate, especially if you’re trying to keep up with current events. Algorithms decide what you see and from whom. Paywalls and ads get in the way of the content you’re trying to find. Social media is an unsearchable mess. RSS cuts through modern media nonsense
Akregator is a simple way to get started in RSS (and Atom feed). You open it, click Add Feed, and drop the URL for whatever feed you want. If you’ve never found a publisher’s feed before, you can typically find a small RSS symbol somewhere on their website that will take you to the URL you need. For example, How-To Geek’s is https://www.howtogeek.com/feed/. Put it in Akregator, and you’ll see our articles appear in a clean, chronological, searchable, sortable feed, along with whatever other publishers you want to follow.
Akregator has an in-app browser that you can use to read full articles on the website by double-clicking the article, or middle-click to open it in your default browser. It’s not limited to just news though. You can use Akregator as a social media feed replacement because YouTube, Bluesky, and Mastodon all let you follow people via RSS, even without accounts.
I’ve used Akregator a ton in the past, though I’ve since moved onto RSS Guard. I needed a feed reader that was compatible with a FreshRSS server, which lets me sync feeds across devices. RSS Guard is very feature-rich with a ton of customization options, and in that way it can be overwhelming for a newcomer. Akregator is far more simple and easy to manage, so I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t waded into the RSS waters before.
Akregator is widely available across Linux distros. Browse your software manager for it, or use one of these commands to install it:
sudo apt install akregator #Debian and Ubuntu
sudo dnf install akgregator #Fedora
sudo pacman -S akregator #Arch
sudo zypper in akregator #openSUSE
2
Mailspring: A Thunderbird Alternative
Most of the time, if your Linux distro comes with an email client, it’s Thunderbird or maybe KDE’s KMail. However, there’s an actively developed alternative that supports Linux and actually is designed to mesh with GNOME’s desktop look: Mailspring.
I’ll note when you first start up Mailspring it prompts you to create an account. This is required for some special features like read receipts and link tracking. You can skip account creation though if you don’t care about those bells and whistles and just want a solid mail client. The paid subscription that Mailspring might promote to you is really only worth it if you’re a small business or organization doing email marketing and newsletters.
For everyone else, you can use it just like you would Outlook or Thunderbird. Signing into Gmail for me was easy, as it just opens Gmail in your browser and requests access to your emails, contacts, and so on. It also lets you choose between Gmail and Outlook keyboard shortcuts at setup.
Playing around with it, I liked how fast the search function worked in Mailspring. Without looking out of place in either GNOME or KDE Plasma, Mailspring sports a look a lot closer to iCloud mail than other email clients I’ve checked out. So I think this would be ideal for anyone trying to make their Linux desktop feel like macOS.
I one caveat to this recommendation: I could not get the Flatpak version of Mailspring to work. It gave me a weird keyring error that I could not solve, even with Mailspring’s official troubleshooting advice. The Snap version worked perfectly, though, and I learned later there are DEB and RPM downloads available on the Mailspring download page.
1
rolldice: “The Die Is Cast”
If you ever needed to roll dice but didn’t have any on hand, or if you wanted to easily incorporate dice-rolling into a Bash script, then I’ve got the command line tool for you: rolldice. It’s a small program made by Stevie Scrickland that delivers a random number based on the type of die roll you want. You can simply type rolldice into the terminal for a stream input, or rolldice -i for a dedicated interactive mode, or simply type individual commands.
For example, let’s say you want to roll a single D12 die—for the uninitiated, a 12-sided die. You’d just enter this command:
rolldice d12
Pretty simple, no? If you want to roll two D12s and automatically add the result together, you’d just prefix the dice string with the numeral 2:
rolldice 2d12
If you want to roll those same two die, but you want the results of each to appear separately rather than totaled, simply place an x in between the 2 and the d:
rolldice 2xd12
Let’s say you need to roll a D12 and a D20 at the same time. Instead, you’d write:
rolldice d12 d20
You can also have dice roll results automatically multiplied by a factor of your choosing, perhaps for scoring purposes. In that case, you can append an asterisk (*) followed by a number to the end of your dice string.
For example, to two D12s and multiply the result by 300, you’d use this command:
rolldice 2d12*300
There are several more string options and flags available, so check man rolldice if you want to get a full education.
Of course, you’ll need to install it first. I couldn’t find it in Fedora and openSUSE repos, but you can install it on Debian and Ubuntu-based distros with this command:
sudo apt install rolldice
And on Arch Linux, with the AUR enabled, use this command:
sudo pacman -S rolldice
Happy rolling, and good luck!
