Can you recommend widget software for Manjaro that might duplicate the type of widgets (news, etc.) that one finds in Windows? Thanks.
Well Plasma has quite a number of desktop widgets. I donāt use any of them. For example I get my news via an rss feed through my email client (claws-mail), from there I automagically open links to a specific instance of firefox.
The GNOME DE should also have widgets. I assume they can be downloaded.
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I canāt recommend any as I donāt really know what youāre after and I have no idea what Windows provides.
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I canāt, because I think every widget that you place takes up cpu cycles and increases load and complication.
For ānews etcā I use Innoreader - so that comes through in a feed visible in Firefox, with notification badges of unread items.
My last experience with Windows was the sidebar in Vista, I spent a week setting it up, and then purged the whole thing and turned of all the desktop effects to make it run smooth.
With Plasma, I donāt need to turn everything off, but Iām still reluctantā¦ I have conky displays for my networking, cpu/ram use, clock, last backup, rtcwake time if set, and disk useā¦ along with the day and date.
Weather widgets suck as do most others.
Plasma has widgets, and you can download more - but YMMV, some are good, others are buggy and old.
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Weather widgets are mostly useless, especially where I live. Actually I have never found a weather widget that was useful.
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Widgets are so unpopular that Microsoft actually removed them in the newer windows versions. Letās be honest: one looks once on them at boot time, and then places windows over them (but they keep using cpu).
I guess the closest to universal widget is Conky, with gazillions of variants. The only drawback that it is noninteractive.
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Wow, you can spot a non-conky user 
Iāll be honest, I did try a couple of conky configs - but the best is when you scrap them all and just focus on things you want to see.
Day/date and a clock that stays on top?
CPU/RAM and networkup/down
Storage and a bit of interesting informationā¦
I mean thatās enough, I have a āprocessesā conky - but that only lasts for a minute after starting, as does my ānotesā which is useful to paste a bunch of keyboard shortcuts Iām trying to learn.
Hereās Yazi:
Right. I tried the weather widget. It was a memory hog and provided no additional info. 
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I find the one Iām using in Plasma to be pretty accurate. But, in my case, I have it set to a weather station roughly Ā¾ of a mile away. I guess your nearest station is likely rather further away than that.
It does display the sun or the moon-phase at the wrong times, though, and differently to my other machine. 
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This is the list of Gnome Extensions I use:
āÆ gnome-extensions list --enabled
dash-to-panel@jderose9.github.com
tailscale-gnome-qs@tailscale-qs.github.io
appindicatorsupport@rgcjonas.gmail.com
auto-move-windows@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
gnome-ui-tune@itstime.tech
legacyschemeautoswitcher@joshimukul29.gmail.com
user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
screenshot-window-sizer@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
easy_docker_containers@red.software.systems
arcmenu@arcmenu.com
dash-to-dock@micxgx.gmail.com
gsconnect@andyholmes.github.io
Maintainers do an amazing job keeping these extensions alive, even during Gnome version bumps their work is exceptional. I recommend them all 
P.S. For gaming you might want to add the Gamemode Extension
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