conky 1.3.0 -- lightweight system monitor for X

[jtan325]

Hi everyone. not sure if this is the right place to post this, and I am not going to spam or anything, but here goes.

I would like to recommend you check out a little program called conky, which is a lightweight, highly configurable system monitor for X. a descendent of the now-defunct torsmo. its main purpose is to be uninvading and consume *very little* resources, much much less than gdesklets and gkrellm.

of course, you want screenshots , so find them under "screenshots" at http://conky.sf.net pretty documentation there too, as opposed to the rather long man page.

Conky 1.3.0, released just yesterday is out and about. download at http://www.sf.net/projects/conky there's a debian package too now, made by yours truly , and hopefully it'll appear in the ubuntu repos for breezy in a month or two.

coincidentally, i'm a conky developer. if you need help, post here, or join #conky on irc, or http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...ght-conky.html (freakish 20+ pages though).

post bugs/feature requests at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=143975

[joede]

I would like to recommend you check out a little program called conky, which is a lightweight, highly configurable system monitor for X. a descendent of the now-defunct torsmo.

Thanx for the post. I've give it a try right after I found the posting at freshmeat.

It looks very nice and I think I'll use it. Nevertheless, there are some drawbacks (the same torsmo have...).

The old "flicker" problems still exists (with nautilus) if I set own_window to no. Any solutions on the roadmap?

If I turn on own_window, it is possible to click on the window to put it on top of all other windows. Is there a way to fix it as lowest window?

there's a debian package too now, made by yours truly , and hopefully it'll appear in the ubuntu repos for breezy in a month or two.

There is no ./debian directory inside the source tarball. Why that?

[Jason-X]

This looks really cool. I'm going to try it out later

[jtan325]

Thanx for the post. I've give it a try right after I found the posting at freshmeat.
It looks very nice and I think I'll use it. Nevertheless, there are some drawbacks (the same torsmo have...).
The old "flicker" problems still exists (with nautilus) if I set own_window to no. Any solutions on the roadmap?
If I turn on own_window, it is possible to click on the window to put it on top of all other windows. Is there a way to fix it as lowest window?
There is no ./debian directory inside the source tarball. Why that?

joede, try turning on the double_buffer option to eliminate the flickering. in your ~/.conkyrc file, there is a "double_buffer" line, change it from 'no' to 'yes'.

as for the window priority, that's something your window manager should support using Extended Window Manager Hints... i use fvwm, i could tell you how to do it for fvwm if you use it...

as for the debian, i don't think you usually distribute debian/* with the source tarball, otherwise you're containing distribution-specific stuff.

what i meant by debian package was that I've built a .deb package that makes the conky installation process much easier for debian/ubuntu users, found at http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=143975 .

download the one for your platform (intel = i386, amd64 = amd64, ppc = mac). this is similiar to using synaptic or apt-get, it's just that conky is not in the official internet ubuntu repositories (but soon will be, i'm working on that).

once you've download the .deb, follow the instructions under the "debian/ubuntu" section of install notes on http://conky.sf.net . hopefully it works.

let me know if you need more help, i'm also in #conky (or other devs are around to help).

[A-star]

Well I use as allignment "Top_left" but then the uppermost line of the window is under the upper gnome bar, which make the line on top unreadable.

Is there a way to avoid this?

If you need a screenshot, I'll post one this evening.

[jtan325]

Well I use as allignment "Top_left" but then the uppermost line of the window is under the upper gnome bar, which make the line on top unreadable.

Is there a way to avoid this?

If you need a screenshot, I'll post one this evening.

A-star, there are some different ways around this.

1) launch conky in its own window, either by passing -o to conky at command line, or changing the own_window setting in your .conkyrc to yes, and then you can move conky around to wherever you want.

2) use the gap_y setting your .conkyrc , see http://conky.sf.net/config_settings.html to put some space between your border and the text to be displayed... that may look kind of crude

3) don't use gnome panel i assume you're using the default gnome window manager, metacity? there's plenty more wm's out there, and one is the right one for you.... hehe

let me know if this helps or if you still have problems.

[jerome bettis]

i just found out about this tonight. i was using torsmo but this is better.

screenshot

i like it. are there any new features in the new version i should check out? i'd like to see a bunch of stuff for weather at some point. i wrote a python script to get that, but it's really a hack. let me know if you want it and i can post it. i also wrote the wifi script.

and i've seen some people with xmms stuff on there. can you control the player or does it just show what's playing? if i could skip tracks with it i'd be all over it.

[jtan325]

i just found out about this tonight. i was using torsmo but this is better.

screenshot

i like it. are there any new features in the new version i should check out? i'd like to see a bunch of stuff for weather at some point. i wrote a python script to get that, but it's really a hack. let me know if you want it and i can post it. i also wrote the wifi script.

and i've seen some people with xmms stuff on there. can you control the player or does it just show what's playing? if i could skip tracks with it i'd be all over it.

besides lots of bug fixes, here are some new features: http://conky.sourceforge.net/changelog.html

weather stuff was removed because the library used for that stuff was waaaay too unstable and causing too many problems. we are open to suggestions/help for conky 2.x.

the xmms stuff is actually mpd (music player daemon), which conky can interface with to some extent. unfortunately, it can't do actual control of the playing of tracks right now... definitely another thing to add for 2.x.

hehe is that really a screenshot of conky, or torsmo? it's the same link as the one you posted in that other thread about system monitors... or you're using conky with your torsmo config? that works too.

sure, send those scripts over. we're hoping to start a user-driven library of scripts for conky. word has it that conky 2.x may have a plug-in system... but you didn' hear it here. shhhhhhhhhhhhh or else i'm gonna have to do the code for that

email me screenshot link, .conkyrc, scripts to < jtan325 at gmail dot com > or post them here. have fun!

[A-star]

2) use the gap_y setting your .conkyrc , see http://conky.sf.net/config_settings.html to put some space between your border and the text to be displayed... that may look kind of crude

This worked fine, thanks for the help

[joede]

joede, try turning on the double_buffer option to eliminate the flickering. in your ~/.conkyrc file, there is a "double_buffer" line, change it from 'no' to 'yes'.

Thanx, but I'm running into the "nautilus" problem. I now use "own_window=off" and must live with the window priority.

as for the window priority, that's something your window manager should support using Extended Window Manager Hints... i use fvwm, i could tell you how to do it for fvwm if you use it...

Ok, after a system crash I'm currently running ubuntu warty together with gnome and metacity. On my old PC, I've used Woody with WindowMaker, which is a much better WM (it can handle this hints). I know, I can use WindowMaker together with Gnome, but I plan to give GNUstep a try, after updating to Ubuntu Hoary (or Debian Testing).

as for the debian, i don't think you usually distribute debian/* with the source tarball, otherwise you're containing distribution-specific stuff.

That's right, but for which flavour of Debian do you build the package? For the most packages, I build my own "backport" to warty.

By the way, wouldn't it be a good idea to add the configuration files to the sample screenshots? I'm interrested in this one: http://conky.sourceforge.net/conky-jc-thumb-2.png