Summary
Want to give your Linux desktop a personal touch? With Conky, you’re just a few steps away from transforming it into a visually stunning and highly functional space that reflects your personal style and meets your needs. Let’s explore how you can make your Linux experience uniquely yours!
Conky: Customizable Widgets for Your Linux Desktop
Conky is a light-weight system monitor software for Linux. With it, you can set up multiple, highly-customizable widgets on your desktop and showcase various types of information. ThinkRainmeter, but a lot more powerful. Here’s a quick overview of what you can do using Conky:
Installation and Set Up
For the purpose of this tutorial, I’ll install Conky on Ubuntu 22.04. If you aren’t running Ubuntu, check out theofficial Conky documentationfor help with installation.
To install Conky, open your terminal and enter the following commands, one by one:
Next, we’ll install the base Conky software.
To make things easy for ourselves, we’ll add the repository for Conky Manager.
Let’s ensure you’re downloading the latest version of Conky Manager by again updating our packages.
Now, install version 2 of Conky Manager.
You’ve successfully installed Conky and Conky Manager on your system. Now, you’re able to technically run the Conky app directly, and you’ll get the following widget on your desktop. It’s a barebone experience where you’ll have to write scripts to tweak the appearance, behavior, and functionality of this widget.
A more streamlined and user-friendly approach is using Conky Manager. It gives you a GUI interface with a list of all installed Conky widgets and themes on your PC. The names appear as complete paths to the specific file. So, instead of saying the “Network panel”, it’ll show you the entire path “~/.conky/TeejeeTech/Network Panel.”
Essentially, the name at the end is the name of the Conky widget and the name before it is the containing folder. You can activate or deactivate the widgets by clicking on the checkboxes for each widget. It also lets you tweak the layout and alignment of the widgets without needing to mess around with any code.
By default, the Conky Manager comes with a number of widgets, but they aren’t eye-catching enough. Not to worry though, as there are talented folks who have developed dedicated Conky themes with stylish widgets that you can simply download and start using on your system, no code necessary.
Installing Conky Themes
For this demonstration, I’ll install the victorConky Theme. To do this, visit itsdownload page, click on “Files,” and download the .zip file. Once downloaded, visit the containing folder and extract the file.
For the Conky widget to work, you’ll first need to install the provided fonts. Simply enter the “fonts” folders, open each of the five fonts one by one and click on the “Install” button.
Once done, you’ll need to move the victorConky file to the “.conky” folder in thehome directory, so that it becomes accessible via the Conky Manager. To do this, open the terminal in the download directory (or wherever you extracted the file to) and enter the following command:
Now, the victorConky widgets should be accessible from the Conky Manager. Open it, and you should see a list of new widgets added. I personally liked the LinuxLarge widget and use it on my system. You can enable it by clicking the checkbox beside it.
Useful Resources
Here’s a list of my top 10 favorite Conky themes ranked by ease of installation (1=easiest and 10=most complex). For more Conky themes, you can visit thePling StoreorDeviant Art.
Conky themes come in all shapes, sizes, and functionality. Simpler Conky themes, like a stylized clock, only require you to move it to the “.conky” directory, and you’re good to go. More complex themes, like the ones that show current weather info, or Gmail notifications, will require you to set up the information channels and also install additional software packages.
Complex Conky Themes from good developers will have a detailed installation guide. Simply follow the instructions specific to the theme to install it on your system.
And that’s it! You’re all set to start your journey to a more personalized and functional Linux desktop experience. Whether it’s for monitoring your system’s health, keeping track of your daily tasks, or just adding a touch of personal flair, Conky is your go-to tool. So go ahead, experiment, and make your desktop truly your own!
