How to get quick weather forecasts on Linux with Meteo
If you’re a fan of keeping an eye on the weather from your Linux desktop, you ought to install a good forecast app. Now, there are many weather applications on Linux, but if you’re looking for a great way to get fast weather updates from the system tray on Linux, Meteo is the one of the best.
For starters, Meteo is easy on the eyes, and the forecasts are easy to read. Secondly, it can live in your system tray and regularly give quick updates. And best of all, Meteo can be configured to provide weather updates from various cities! Here’s how to set it up on your system!
Install Meteo on Linux
Before we can go over how to set up Meteo for quick weather updates on the Linux desktop, the program needs to be installed. Unfortunately, the Meteo application doesn’t seem to be packaged for distribution on any of the major Linux desktop operating systems (except Arch Linux). As a result, building from source is required.
To build the Meteo application from source, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Shift + T or Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the instructions below.
Collecting dependencies
Meteo is a Qt application, so you’ll need to grab a few Qt dependencies and set them up before attempting to build the program. These dependencies include Python3-pip, Python3 Qt5, and a few other things.
Ubuntu
sudo apt install pyqt5-dev-tools qttools5-dev-tools python3-pip
After installing the dependencies on your Ubuntu PC, you’ll need to run a symlink command, to ensure that Qt5 is the system default.
ln -s /usr/share/qtchooser/qt5-x86_64-linux-gnu.conf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qtchooser/default.conf
Following the ln command, use pip3 to install the “lxml” module. Without it, Meteo will not launch on Linux.
sudo pip3 install lxml
Debian
sudo apt-get install pyqt5-dev-tools qttools5-dev-tools python3-pip
Once all dependencies are taken care of, run the command below to ensure that Qt5 is the default on your Debian Linux PC.
ln -s /usr/share/qtchooser/qt5-x86_64-linux-gnu.conf /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qtchooser/default.conf
Debian Linux needs the “lxml” Python 3 module for Meteo to build and launch successfully. To get it installed, use the Pip3 command below.
sudo pip3 install lxml
Arch Linux
On Arch Linux, there’s no real need to deal with installing dependencies manually. Instead, you can get the entire application built from source automatically using the AUR. In a terminal, enter the following commands to get everything up and running.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git cd trizen makepkg -sri trizen -S meteo-qt
Fedora
To install the Fedora dependencies, use the Dnf packaging commands below in your terminal session.
sudo dnf install python3-qt5-devel qt5-linguist qtchooser python3-pip
After taking care of the dependencies for Fedora Linux, set Qt5 as the default on your PC.
sudo update-alternatives --config qtchooser-default
Finally, install the lxml module through Python 3.
sudo pip3 install lxml
OpenSUSE
Installing the Meteo dependencies on OpenSUSE Linux requires using Zypper. Using the command below, get the latest build files on your SUSE PC.
sudo zypper install python3-qt5-devel libqt5-linguist
Next, update SUSE so that Qt4 is set as the default.
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/lrelease-qt5 /usr/bin/lrelease
Finish up installing the build dependencies on SUSE with the pip command.
sudo pip3 install lxml
Generic Linux
Any Linux distribution can run Meteo, so long as you can install the dependencies covered on the GitHub page. For more information, click here.
Building Meteo
Taking care of the dependencies for Meteo is tedious because there are so many, but it’s worth it, as the program builds quite nicely. To start the building, go to the terminal and use the python3 command to run the installation script.
Note: When installing the Meteo application, you may wish to enable extra options. To access these options, run the command below with the –help switch.
sudo python3 setup.py install
Setting up Meteo
To start using Meteo, launch the application, and it’ll appear in the system tray on the desktop. Right-click on the red X icon and select “Preferences.”
Inside preferences, the app will tell you that you need an API key from OpenWeatherMap. Head here, create your key on the website and paste it into the “OpenWeatherMap” text box.
Once your key is set, go through the rest of the settings and set the city you live in. Be sure also to tweak all of the program settings to your liking. For instance, if you prefer Fahrenheit to Celsius, change it.
When you’re satisfied with all of the settings inside of Meteo, click the “Apply” button to apply the settings.
To check the weather with Meteo, go to the system tray and double-click on the icon. Or, wait, and it will periodically update you with pop-up messages.
