Recommend decent weather widgets?

[ScottyK]

The default weather widgets are less than impressive in my opinion. Can anybody recommend some good ones, and where to get them?

[rfakhrai]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

I tend to agree but I've yet to find any other plasma widgets that are what I want them to be. I finally set up conkyforecast in my conky. It was a bit of an adventure but it gives me all the information that I could want.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

they are just too ...."galumphy" for me..

I like the weather stuff in conky but you have to subscribe to a particular service for the particular script and it's just too much hassle..

so....galumphy or hassle!

woodchecksNWSsmoke

[kubicle]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

The default weather widgets are less than impressive in my opinion. Can anybody recommend some good ones, and where to get them?

Have you tried YAWP (plasma-widget-yawp)?

If you have, you could provide some information about what you think is lacking from it.

[ScottyK]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

yaWP is exactly what I'm looking for!

Did the installation, program complained that I didn't have a weather engine installed. So I installed what I thought was the correct one.

Reboot the computer, and now can't log in. Oops!

[kubicle]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

Did the installation, program complained that I didn't have a weather engine installed. So I installed what I thought was the correct one.

Did you install the package that is available from the repositories?
(I ask because installing plasma-widget-yawp should pull in plasma-dataengines-yawp as a dependancy)

Reboot the computer, and now can't log in. Oops!

In case it's the widget that's causing problems, you can try temporarily renaming your plasma config file(s) to start a "clean desktop" with which you can investigate the problem. (renaming ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc is probably enough to get you logged in KDE if it is indeed the widget that is preventing it:

mv ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc.backup

(alternatively you can remove the widget from the file, but backing up the file is quicker/easier))

[ScottyK]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

OK, I just dropped into terminal and ran this.

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Fixed some broken packages, rebooted, and now I'm back in.

I'm running KDE 4.6, so I wonder if that has something to do with it.

This is what I'm doing to get it installed!

1. search for yaWP in Kpackagekit.
2. select "plasma-widget-yawp" and "plasma-dataengines-ya..."
3. search for "weather" to find a weather engine.
4. "libweather-com-perl" and ""libweather-ion6" are already checked.
5. Check apply.

Error -

The following packages have unmet dependencies: plasma-dataengines-yawp: Depends: libweather-ion4a(>=4:4.4.0) but it is not going to be installed.


That is on my notebook. on my desktop, I'm running KDE 4.5.5 and yaWP is happily running.

Ideas? Thanks!

[kubicle]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

The problem is that you have KDE 4.6 (from the kubunta ppa, I assume), but the yawp widget (and dataengine) in maverick repos is built against KDE 4.5 libraries (and depends on older version of libweather-ion).

You could try installing the yawp packages from natty's repositories (those are built against KDE 4.6 and *should* install cleanly on maverick with kde4.6)...although I don't usually recommend mixing packages from different versions, installing just yawp shouldn't eat kittens.

Other options include scouring the ppa's for more recent yawp builds, or build it yourself...or make do without yawp until you upgrade to natty.

[ScottyK]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

Can I just "downgrade" to 4.5 and wait until Natty comes out?

If so, how do you do a downgrade, or is it once you upgrade that's it?

[kubicle]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

Can I just "downgrade" to 4.5 and wait until Natty comes out?

If so, how do you do a downgrade, or is it once you upgrade that's it?

As a general rule, downgrading is more tricky than upgrading, although there are tools (like ppa-purge) that may help in removing ppa installed packages and reverting to official packages.

Issues are still fairly common (though most times not unsolvable), and there is of course a chance that your KDE 4.6 user configuration files are not compatible with 4.5, which would require some additional clean-up.

I'd still recommend giving the natty packages of yawp a go first, as a "path of least resistance" (unless you have more reasons to revert to 4.5).

[ScottyK]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

I'll fire up the test machine and give it a go trying to update to the natty version. I hate to screw up my main notebook, I'm still pretty new to linux!

Also thanks for all of the info. I was going to update my desktop to 4.6, but I'm now just going to wait for Natty to come out.

[rfakhrai]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

kubicle, is YAWP yours? I just installed it and it's great. I've already gone through the "hassle" to get conkyforecast going so it serves my needs for now. But I'm glad to be able to recommend YAWP to anyone in the future. Good job.

[jeremy1701]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

I agree... yaWP is pretty nice.

[kubicle]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

I'll fire up the test machine and give it a go trying to update to the natty version. I hate to screw up my main notebook, I'm still pretty new to linux!

Just a reminder that you'll need KDE SC 4.6 (maverick+ppa4.6) to install the natty packages for yawp (or you'll get a dependancy error)... just in case your test machine has 4.5.x.

kubicle, is YAWP yours?

It's not mine, I just think it's the "cream of the crop" in weather widgets.
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php...?content=94106

[Marlin]

Re: Recommend decent weather widgets?

After upgrading to KDE 4.6 my previous version of YAWP didn't work (of course). I have since installed the Natty version and it works as usual and as expected. For any YAWP fans, this is as usual. I have had to do this for the last three KDE upgrades, but I have never had issues from this widget caused by mixing versions. To tell you the truth, I like YAWP so much that the risk doesn't matter to me. It is the only weather widget that scratches all of my itches.