Install Conky on Pop!_OS/Ubuntu

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1

How about a tutorial on how to install conkey and how to set it up correctly, where it doesn’t just get installed to the center of your desktop? I’ve tried installing it in the past and did find some tutorials on how to install it, but never how to get it set up correctly. It would be nice to know how to use conky themes and to get it in the upper right corner of my desktop. That was the part that confused me. I like the way you setup your tutorials and how you explain things and how you show us how to do it, whatever it may be.

Thank You, Redwingsred.

2

Hi @motored1974, :wave:

welcome to the community. :heart:

There´s the conkyrc file: ~/.conkyrc which takes care of the configuration.
It consists of two parts.

In the first part, programme settings are defined, the second part takes care of what is displayed on the desktop.

This lists the variables available in a potential conky configuration.

GitHub - brndnmtthws/conky: Light-weight system monitor for X, Wayland, and other things, too is also worth taking a look at.

The first part of my config looks like this:

conky.config = {
    alignment = 'bottom_right',
    background = false,
    border_width = 1,
    cpu_avg_samples = 2,
	default_color = 'white',
    default_outline_color = 'white',
    default_shade_color = 'white',
    double_buffer = true,
    draw_borders = false,
    draw_graph_borders = true,
    draw_outline = false,
    draw_shades = false,
    use_xft = true,
    diskio_avg_samples = 3, 
    font = 'Andale Mono:size=9',
    gap_x = 9,
    gap_y = 30,
    minimum_height = 5,
	minimum_width = 5,
    net_avg_samples = 2,
    no_buffers = true,
    out_to_console = false,
    out_to_stderr = false,
    extra_newline = false,
    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window_type = 'normal',
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,skip_pager,sticky,skip_taskbar',
    own_window_transparent = false,
    own_window_colour = 'MidnightBlue',
    stippled_borders = 0,
    update_interval = 1.0,
    uppercase = false,
    use_spacer = 'none',
    show_graph_scale = false,
    show_graph_range = false

}

…

In your case, you´d want to modify the alignment paramater, I think:

alignment = 'top_right',

and you might want to experiment with

gap_x and gap_y. These parameters offset the position of what´s defined in alignment.

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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3

Thank You Very Much!

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4

using Conky was easier some years ago thanks to a GUI tool called Conky Manager. It’s been discontinued and you have to use Conky by hands meaning you have to modify the config files on your own like @Rosika showed.

We could do a tutorial on Conky but since it is manual now, it will be for intermediate to advanced users as beginners might not be comfortable with it.

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5

I probably haven’t used or played with Conky for some 10+ years or so… I found I always used all my screen real estate to host application windows, and if I wanted to know something about my system performance, I’d run top, htop or bashtop, or system monitor anyway… Seems redundant to me anyway, but if you like eyecandy and widgets - go for it - Rosika has some great suggestions there…

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