How to use Conky to make Linux more awesome

Have you ever looked at your desktop and thought what you could do to make it more attractive? You may be tired of trying different wallpapers to improve desktop aesthetics. Then how to closely monitor CPU temperature, network usage or hard drive? You can do all this with Conky.

What is conky?

Conky is basically a Linux system monitoring tool. It has the ability to monitor and report on a lot of system resources. CPU statistics, temperature, memory usage and many other things are within the scope of Conky's watch. Its beautiful themes and widgets also give users more options to customize their desktop.

Do you find this tool interesting? Please continue to learn more details later!

Install Conky

Both command line and GUI methods are available, but you should know how to pair all of these methods together. Open a command line window and type:

 sudo apt update 
 sudo apt install conky-all 
 conky 

What you will see on the screen is the version of Conky. Although there is a tremendous power, but as you can see, the core of this application is a pretty lightweight tracking tool. At this point, Conky is receiving settings from the file /etc/conky/conky.config. It does this by default when no theme is applied. Once the installation process takes place, it will start relying on this file, controlling all customizations. The file Conky needs to be in the main directory, namely ~ / .conkyrc (will be mentioned later).

Themes and utilities

Before approaching resource tracking, set up a simple utility to familiarize yourself with how it works. Download this beautiful watch (download link: https://www.deviantart.com/mowgli-writes/art/qlocktwo-conky-470067388) and go back to the terminal. (If Conky is still running, you can close it by pressing Ctrl + C ).

Once the file has been downloaded, enter:

 cd ~ / Downloads 
 unzip qlocktwoconky_mowglimod * .zip 
 mv qlocktwo .conkyrc 
 mv .conkyrc ~ / 
 conky 

What you see in the middle of the desktop is a simple but beautiful watch, displaying time in words rather than the usual numbers.

But what if you don't want this gadget to appear in the middle of your screen? File ~ / .conkyrc is currently active. First there are some linking terms that you need to get acquainted with:

1. Top left: tl
2. Top right: tr
3. Top: tm
4. Bottom left: bl
5. Bottom right: br
6. Bottom: bm
7. Left center: ml
8. Center right: mm
9. Right middle: mr

You can even adjust the distance in pixels by adjusting values ​​like gap_x, which is the horizontal distance; gap_y, is the vertical distance. Accordingly, move the widget to the right center of the screen. Open another command line window and type:

 nano ~ / .conkyrc 

Once you have set the alignment settings, change its value to mr, ie the right center according to the above convention. Save and close the file by pressing Ctrl + X , followed by Y. After that, you will see your intriguing visual clock is moved to the right center part of the screen.

GUI

Use Conky Manager to customize the GUI user interface. Enter the following command:

 echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/teejee2008/ppa/ubuntu wily main" | sudo tee -a /etc/sources.list.d/teejee2008-ubuntu-ppa-wily.list 
 sudo apt update 
 sudo apt install conky-manager 

A side note, very special tee commands. It can copy a standard input, turn it into a standard output, and even create copies for one or more files. It solves the problem when we need to append a privileged file. For example, trying to run the following commands will have no effect:

 sudo echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/teejee2008/ppa/ubuntu wily main" >> /etc/sources.list.d/teejee2008-ubuntu-ppa-wily.list 

This is because the echo command is sudo right but the second command is not.

Conky Manager has a more intuitive way of working. You can activate it by searching for it under the application, or typing the manager in the terminal.

It has an easy-to-see interface and some very useful features. Users can add theme packages, tweak existing themes, along with some basic utility controls.

Install theme

You can add themes by downloading an archive and extracting it into the ~ / .conky / directory.

To get started, you can get the Aurora theme collection and extract into the aforementioned folder. Conky Manager only needs to reload and it will display anything new in that folder. Remember that files or folders with dots (.) In front are hidden files. To switch between hidden files, press Ctrl + H or go to View> Show Hidden Files .

Now, when the Conky Manager is reopened, it will have all the themes and utilities you can use. Simply click on a theme, wallpaper and related utilities will be loaded. The theme below shows a digital clock, weather information, various system resources, and even artwork, as well as titles from the currently running song in the client application. Spotify.

When you get bored, just add other gadgets from the widget tab or change the entire theme.

Edit theme

After selecting the theme, click on the edit icon. Now you have the opportunity to change the wallpaper and see which utilities are applied to this theme.

Regarding the theme of the related utility, suppose you want it to move 150 pixels to the right. Go to the Widgets tab , scroll until you find the utility you want and click Edit. Here, you can adjust its position, size, transparency and time or network (for utilities with this function). Change the values ​​you want, click Apply and see the results.

Of course, there are some utilities that don't look very good on your system, because they only display GPU temperatures, instead of all GPU information. There are many beautiful themes that have been developed and you should not miss them, because they are free and very simple to use.

Are you happy to look at your desktop wallpaper every day? Is your computer anything other than a tool? What do you use to customize your desktop? Which Conky theme are you using? Share it with us in the comment section below!

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