Tux Training

Make Conky Transparent and movable

March 22, 2008, 6:37 pm

Conky is a light-weight system monitor. It’s in most the repo’s for most distributions. I personally like conky to look as if it’s part of my actual desktop. Unlike gdesklets or other desktop widget applications, i want it to feel like it’s part of the desktop itself, where it doesn’t get in the way of other windows as well as to adding some eye candy as well. But it’s also nice to have the ability to move it when necessary as well. There are times (or at least there are for me) when it might be nice to shift conky slightly, so I can see what’s happening without shifting other windows around.

To that end, I cooked up a .conkyrc file that displays a 200-pixel wide panel with the traditional system indicators in place, plus the settings that float it on the first workspace of my Fluxbox setup. This way it doesn’t get in the way of other windows, but it’s still moveable as well.

Once you have conky installed, you can simply create a file:

nano /home/username/.conkyrc

and place the following text within that file:

double_buffer yes
update_interval 3.0
background yes

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar

use_xft yes
override_utf8_locale no
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=7
xftalpha 0.8
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
uppercase yes
use_spacer no

border_margin 9
border_width 0

default_color black
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color black

alignment top_right
minimum_size 200
gap_x 9
gap_y 9

TEXT
${alignc}${time %I:%M %p}, ${time %a}., ${time %b. %e}, ${time %G}
${alignc}Ubuntu Linux $kernel
${alignc}hostname $nodename at ${addr ra0}
${alignc}${execi 1000 cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ‘model name’ | sed -e
’s/model name.*: //’}
${alignc}$uptime uptime

CPU Load: ${alignr}$cpu%
${cpugraph 20,200 000000 ffffff}
Load averages: ${alignr}$loadavg

Processes: ${alignr}$running_processes of $processes running
Highest CPU usage:
${color yellow} ${top name 1}${alignr}${top cpu 1}
${color}${top name 2}${alignr}${top cpu 2}
${top name 3}${alignr}${top cpu 3}
${top name 4}${alignr}${top cpu 4}
Highest memory usage:
${color yellow} ${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top_mem mem 1}
${color}${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top_mem mem 2}
${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top_mem mem 3}
${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top_mem mem 4}

Resources:
Memory usage: ${alignr}${memperc}% (${mem}b/${memmax}b)
${membar 3,200}
Swap usage: ${alignr}${swapperc}% (${swap}b/${swapmax}b)
${swapbar 3,200}
HDD free: ${alignr}${fs_free_perc /}% (${fs_free /}b/${fs_size /}b)
${fs_bar 3,200 /}

NET:
Up:${alignr}${upspeed ra0}Kbps, ${totalup ra0}b total
${upspeedgraph ra0 20,200 000000 ffffff}
Down: ${alignr}${downspeed ra0}Kbps, ${totaldown ra0}b total
${downspeedgraph ra0 20,200 000000 ffffff}

With this setup, I can use the ALT key and the left mouse button (the standard window drag combo) to move conky around the desktop, to whereever it suits me. Conky always stays in the background so it never blocks a window, and I keep the nifty transparent mode I like so much.