TUTORIAL: Straw (Desktop News Aggregator)

by Thomas Chung on Jan 16, 2004

Straw is a desktop news aggregator (also known as RSS Feed Reader) for the GNOME environment. Its aim is to be a faster, easier and more accessible way to read news and blogs than the traditional browser. For more information, visit the official site: http://www.nongnu.org/straw/

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install straw RPM package and resolve any dependency. We'll also show you how to add RSS feed for this site.

Thanks to Seth Vidal, we can simply use his pre-compiled RPMS for Fedora Core 1.

Download straw-0.21.1-1.i386.rpm and bsddb3-4.1.6-1.i386.rpm from his website.

UPDATE 2004-01-17: Since I couldn't download any files from Savannah download site linked from the official site, I've contacted the developer Juri Pakaste to offer a mirror site on our server.

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Try to install those two RPM packages you've just downloaded.

[tchung@localhost tchung]$ cd download
[tchung@localhost download]$ ls
bsddb3-4.1.6-1.i386.rpm  straw-0.21.1-1.i386.rpm
[tchung@localhost download]$ sudo rpm -Uvh *.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        gnome-python2-gconf is needed by straw-0.21.1-1
        gnome-python2-gnomevfs is needed by straw-0.21.1-1
        mx is needed by straw-0.21.1-1

If you see an error message as shown above, install dependencies (RPM packages) first as shown below:

[tchung@localhost download]$ sudo yum install gnome-python2-gconf gnome-python2-gnomevfs mx
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 1 - i386 - Base
Server: Fedora Core 1 - i386 - Released Updates
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Resolving dependencies
Dependencies resolved
I will do the following:
[install: gnome-python2-gnomevfs 2.0.0-2.i386]
[install: gnome-python2-gconf 2.0.0-2.i386]
[install: mx 2.0.3-9.i386]
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Getting gnome-python2-gnomevfs-2.0.0-2.i386.rpm
gnome-python2-gnomevfs-2. 100% |=========================|  20 kB    00:00
Getting gnome-python2-gconf-2.0.0-2.i386.rpm
gnome-python2-gconf-2.0.0 100% |=========================|  23 kB    00:00
Getting mx-2.0.3-9.i386.rpm
mx-2.0.3-9.i386.rpm       100% |=========================| 623 kB    00:03
Running test transaction:
Test transaction complete, Success!
mx 100 % done 1/3
gnome-python2-gnomevfs 100 % done 2/3
gnome-python2-gconf 100 % done 3/3
Installed:  gnome-python2-gnomevfs 2.0.0-2.i386 gnome-python2-gconf 2.0.0-2.i386 mx 2.0.3-9.i386
Transaction(s) Complete
[tchung@localhost download]$

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Now try again to install those two RPMS you've downloaded. 
You should be able to install them without any dependencies problem this time.

[tchung@localhost download]$ ls
bsddb3-4.1.6-1.i386.rpm  straw-0.21.1-1.i386.rpm
[tchung@localhost download]$ sudo rpm -Uvh *.rpm
Password:
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:bsddb3                 ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:straw                  ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost download]$

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To launch the program, go to:
Gnome Main Menu > Internet > More Internet Applications > "Straw Desktop News Aggregator"

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To add a new RSS Feed - for example our Fedora Updates from FedoraNEWS.ORG, click on the green "+" sign 
and type the URL for RSS/XML