Linux has a good range of open source weather based apps, both GUI and terminal-based.
A reader suggested I take a look at Forecast, a simple weather application designed for the COSMIC desktop. This is free and open source software.
Installation
I installed the Flatpak using Pamac, Manjaro’s GUI package manager.
As expected, the Flatpak installs with no issue.
In Operation
Starting the program yields an error.
The geolocation API is being heavily used, so I had to get my own geocoding API key. While the free tier provides enough requests, most people are unlikely to bother creating their own account.
Here’s example output from Forecast. We can choose from a hourly forecast, daily forecast, and details. The daily forecast is limited to 3 days.
Key Features
- Change the city.
- Choose between Hourly Forecast, Daily Forecast, and Details.
- Choose the units displays: Celsius or Fahrenheit.
- Choose the time format: 12 hour or 24 hour.
- Pressure units: hPa, bar, kPa, psi, or mmHg.
- Speed units: m/s, mph, km/h
Summary
Forecast is a basic weather app. Its UI is fine but the program falls way short of Mousam in terms of ease of use, functionality and appearance.
The program isn’t tied to a specific desktop environment as I’ve tried it with a variety of desktops including KDE Plasma and GNOME.
Forecast uses weather data from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The software would benefit by using the Open-Meteo API, but judging from the developer’s response to a GitHub issue it seems this is unlikely to be added due to time constraints. That’s fair enough, many people expect far too much from developers who give up their spare time to write something for the community.
Website: github.com/cosmic-utils/forecast
Support:
Developer: Jacob Westall
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Forecast is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| GUI Weather Software | |
|---|---|
| WeeWX | Interacts with weather stations to produce graphs/reports |
| OpenWeather Refined | GNOME shell extension which displays weather information |
| Mousam | Weather at a glance |
| GTK Meteo | Weather forecast application |
| meteo-qt | System tray application for weather status information |
| Typhoon | Provides real-time weather updates and forecasts |
| Condensed Weather | KDE Plasma widget |
| Weather | Monitor the current weather conditions |
| Halo | Weather software written in Python |
| wmweather+ | National Weather Service METAR bulletins, ANV and MRF forecasts |
| Kweather | Convergent weather application for Plasma |
| Nimbus | Minimal weather applet |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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