1. Simple Conky

For people who prefer a clean, simple, minimalistic design Simple Conky is a great way to go. It’s one of the few listed here that includes unread mail notifications.

2. Cherries

Part of a greater cherry-themed graphics pack, this configuration doesn’t pack in loads of info, but what it does include, it handles beautifully. The full pack can be found here.

3. Conky Widget Script

Born from a desire to combine Lua scripting with Conky’s capabilities, this gorgeous setup can give you system information in a way that’s hard to beat when it comes to simple beauty. Setup/installation might be a little trickier here than with some of the other options, but the results can be well worth it.

4. Night Drive

Night Drive puts all the info into a single bar that resembles an automotive dashboard. CPU, RAM and the usual monitors are all present along with a music display widget on the far right.

5. Conky Colors

To date we’ve come across more than one Conky configuration that goes by this name, but the one we’d recommend is here. This pack comes in 3 flavors – default, Cairo, and Rings. The example shown here is Rings.

6. Bionic Conky

While not the most flexible of the bunch, Bionic Conky is clearly among the most visually interesting. Most Conky configurations are kept in a shaded box or left as floating text, but here the content is tightly coupled with the design. This makes for a gorgeous desktop if you continue the robotic theme, but it may lack the flexibility of some of the other options listed here.

7. Conky Ken

The most noticeable aspect of this design is the radial display on the left. Where a normal Conky config would display things like CPU and network usage in bar graph form, Ken changes the shading of the circles to indicate those changes.

Conclusion

Conky’s base capabilities make it fantastically useful, but a little extra software can take it to a new level of form and function. If you’re not already using Conky, now’s a great time to start. If you’re an old hand, then hopefully at least one of the above configurations can help you take that extra step toward the desktop of your dreams.

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Installation

This is a new project, and not yet available in the repositories of your average distribution. There are binaries available (no packaging or installation needed) for 32 and 64 bit Linux on the project’s Google Code page (the page is in Spanish). This author had trouble getting the 64 bit version to work properly, and would recommend the 32 bit version for both platforms.

Once you download the tarball for your architecture, extract it into the location of your choice. This can often be done by right-clicking the file from a file manager, or from the terminal with

tar -zxvf ConWizard_32bits_V1.0_Beta1

#or whatever your filename may be

It will extract an individual file, which can be run to launch ConkyWizard.

Layout and Appearance

After the initial Welcome screen, your first options will be to choose where on your desktop you’d like Conky to reside. If you use a panel or dock that does not expand to fill the entire edge of the screen, you can set Conky to the same side and you may be able to place certain items in the always-visible space left by the dock.

The next screen is slightly more complicated. Here you can set more specific placement options for the Conky window. As demonstrated by the visual aid in the wizard, you are given multiple options for margins. You can set these to ensure that the Conky screen does not end up behind your panel or dock. This was one area where I found ConkyWizard particularly impressive, as it correctly detected my settings and guessed appropriate margins to set for my desktop, even though I have the dock in a very non-standard right-side 64 pixel configuration on a 1440×900 widescreen desktop.

Setting Widgets

Adding and removing widgets from Conky has been improved dramatically with the Conky Wizard. Instead of searching online or through documentation to find out the names of all the possible widgets and the options for enabling them, you can simply select or deselect whichever ones you’d like.

If you like, you can add your own widgets based on the existing ones. For example, the screenshot above shows a CPU monitor widget. If you’ve got more than one CPU, you can use the Edit Widget button to copy the settings from one and paste them into another (altered as needed).

Once you’re finished customizing the order and layout of your widgets, you can finish the wizard. When started, Conky should now have a configuration matching what you entered into your options. There are occasionally some issues with proper alignment, but for the most part ConkyWizard creates a beautiful and functional Conky config quickly and easily, and that’s pretty impressive.

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To add events/appointment to your Google Calendar, the most primitive way is to open your web browser, login to the Google Calendar site and add an event. What about the geekiest (and fastest) way? By the command line, of course.

Gcalcli is a Python application that allows you to access and manage your Google Calendar from a command line. You can use it to retrieve your agenda, event list, and quickly add new events. What’s more, it can also be used as a reminder service to help you remember the things that you need to do.

Installation

Gcalcli is included in the Ubuntu repository, which means you can easily install via the Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic Package Manager, or simply with the command line:

sudo apt-get install gcalcli

Configuration

Before we start, we need to create the configuration file. Open a text editor. Paste the following lines:

[gcalcli]
user: yourusername
pw: yourpassword

Replace “yourusername” with your Google account login name, without the gmail.com.

Replace “yourpassword” with your Google login password.

Save the file in your home folder with the filename .gcalclirc (don’t forget the “.” in front of the galclirc and no file extension is required)

Usage

To test it, open a terminal and type

gcalcli agenda

It should show your agenda for the next 5 days.

To get a quick glance of your next 2 weeks agenda

gcalcli calw 2

Whole month agenda

gcalcli calm

You can also set gcalcli to show a reminder popup if the event is within 10 minutes from the current time.

gcalcli remind 10

One thing though, there is no automation for the reminder service, so you need to run the command everytime to remind you of your event. A good way to automate it is via crontab or using gnome-schedule

To add an event to Google calendar, use the command

gcalcli quick <event>

Replace the <event> with a brief description of the time, date and event detail. For example:

gcalcli quick '5pm 31/7/2010 Meeting with Advertisers'
# or
gcalcli quick 'Dinner with Eric 7pm tomorrow'

Display Google Calendar on your desktop

To get Google Calendar onto your desktop, we are going to use a combination of gcalcli and conky.

Install conky:

sudo apt-get install conky

Open a text editor and paste the following text:

alignment top_right
background no
border_width 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 5
gap_y 60
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
double_buffer yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no
text_buffer_size 8096
 
TEXT
${execi 300 gcalcli --nc --cals=owner calw 4}

Save the file in your Home directory with the filename .conkyrc

Press Alt + F2. Type in “conky” and press Enter.

Your agenda for the next 4 weeks will now appear on your desktop and it will refresh every 5 minutes.

Need more help on gcalcli? Check out their HowTo wiki.

Try it out and let us know if it works for you.

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Design Concept

Not everyone has the same goals for their desktop interface, so before we get much further I’d like to explain the reasons for this design. The single most important aspect of this design is the “info bar” on the right.

As you can see, this setup is designed for a widescreen monitor. Without that extra space on the side, the info bar (as configured in this guide) would take up too much screen space.

I have a lot of requirements for my info bar, and finding and configuring the software necessary to meet those requirements took a lot of research and testing. No single solution met all my needs, so I had to combine several tools.

The standard Lucid Lynx Gnome install, as of Beta 2, is the basis for these modifications. All software, unless otherwise noted, is available in the standard repositories. The wallpaper is from wallpaperbox.eu, and I’m using the Dust theme for Gnome.

Panel – Gnome Panel

Some may be surprised that with all the fancy 3D docks available, I stuck with gnome-panel. The main reason is simple – applets. Specifically, the Gnome Panel in Lucid was the only dock or panel available that includes a useful interactive notification area for chat clients.

From the standard Gnome desktop, remove the lower panel completely, and open the properties for the top panel. Change location from Top to Right, and increase the size to 64. In the screenshots, the panel is set to solid black with about 60% opacity to match the Gadgets sidebar. Choose your panel applets at will, but if you’d like to copy my setup the objects are ordered as follows (from top to bottom):

• Main Menu
• Indicator Applet
• Indicator Applet Session
• Application Launchers (Moblin Icon Theme, desaturated)
• Weather Report
• Shutdown
• CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor

Full panel can be seen in the desktop screenshot above

UPDATE: Download link added for icon theme

Google Desktop Gadgets

There are two features of Gadgets that make it essential to my setup – the Gmail app, and the ability to block off a section of the screen. With the Gadget sidebar active and set to Always On Top, maximized windows will not cover the sidebar. Without it, Gadgets would be far less useful to me as they’d always be covered by running applications.

There are other mail-checking panel applets out there, but only the Gadgets version gives me a fully interactive interface where I can read, compose, and reply without ever opening up a web browser or email client.

Conky

Conky is an extremely powerful system information tool. To use it, you edit a text file to list the items you want displayed, and Conky embeds itself into your desktop background, frequently updating itself to show real-time system information.

Configuring Conky is beyond the scope of this guide, but fortunately we’ve already taken care that. By using the Gnome Panel weather applet, we can greatly reduce the complexity of our Conky setup. If you’d like to copy my Conky setup, you can download my .conkyrc file here.

Important Note: If the Gadget sidebar is set to Always On Top and you want Conky to sit behind it, you’ll need to edit your Conky config file to include own_window yes and own_window_type override. If you’re using my config file, those entries are already set.

Desktop Management – Compiz Expo

I can’t live without virtual desktops, sometimes called workspaces. X has supported them for decades, but until recently there’s been very little innovation. The Expo plugin, part of the Compiz package, provides a fast, beautiful, efficient way to view and manage your virtual desktops.

If Compiz and Expo are already installed, you can activate it with the Win+E key combo. If not, Expo can be activated from within the Compiz settings manager. The 3×3 pattern in the screenshot is a result of setting Gnome’s workspaces to 3 rows, 3 columns.

Guake

Finally, there’s Guake, the drop-down terminal. If you’ve played a lot of PC first-person-shooter games, you’re probably familiar with the concept of a drop-down command terminal. Guake and similar apps like Yakuake for KDE are extremely useful for heavy users of the command line, as you no longer need to alt-tab or switch workspaces to get to a terminal.

Room for Improvement

The biggest problem with this setup is that it requires several different applications to get the proper functionality from the info bar. For this to truly be a top-notch setup, we’d need a sidebar application capable of handling all the required tasks. I’d like to abuse my position as an internet writer to ask the software community to help with this. Can we create an application that can act as system info center, notification area, messaging center, and dock? Google Gadgets bring you pretty close, but I think we can do better.

If you’ve got any suggestions or other desktop customization tips, let us know in the comments!

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• Configuring Conky The (Very) Easy Way

While the installation of Conky is easy, configuring it can be a rather troublesome task. Follow this tutorial closely and I am sure you’ll master the trick in no time.

Install Conky

Click here to install Conky on your Ubuntu machine. Alternatively, open your terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type:

sudo apt-get install conky

Once the installation is completed, type in the terminal:

zcat /usr/share/doc/conky/examples/conky.conf.gz > ~/.conkyrc

To test if conky is working, in the terminal, type

conky

A window will pop up showing all your system information. Other than the background which is your own wallpaper, the information will be the same as the one shown in the image below.

(Click to enlarge)

Close the conky window. We are now going to configure it to display the information that we want and also to change its color to match those of your wallpaper.

Configuring Conky

Go to your Home folder (Places -> Home). Press Ctrl + H to show hidden files. Scroll down till you found the file .conkyrc. Double click to open it in Text editor. This is the main config file that will affect what is showing on your desktop.

Scroll down the list and make sure the following configuration are set properly. Make sure that these settings do not have a ‘#’ in front. If yes, remove them.

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=8
xftalpha 0.8
update_interval 5.0
total_run_times 0
own_window no
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_colour black
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 280 5
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
stippled_borders 8
border_margin 4
border_width 1
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color black
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 12
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
net_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no
use_spacer none
text_buffer_size 1024
override_utf8_locale yes

The above configurations are the default setting that I used in my system. When you are more familiar with it, you can change it to suit your needs. When you are done with the configuration setting, leave this aside for a while. We will get back to it later.

Installing the Mail and Weather Forecast package for Conky

We need to install additional package in order for Conky to display new mail and weather forecast on your desktop.

In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/m-buck/ubuntu hardy main

Save and close.

Back to your terminal,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conkyemail conkyforecast

Configuring Weather Forecast

Now, go to Weather.com and sign up a partner account. This will enable you to enquire the weather information in your city.

Once you have signed up, check your mailbox for the confirmation email. Scroll down the mail until you see your Partner ID and License key.

Back to your terminal,

sudo cp /usr/share/conkyforecast/conkyForecast.config ~/.conkyForecast.config
gedit ~/.conkyForecast.config

Fill in the XOAP_Partner_ID and XOAP_License_key fields with the information from the confirmation email. Save and exit.

On your browser, go to http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=YOUR_CITY and replace YOUR_CITY with the name of your city. You will see a xml similar to the image below. Record down the id. This is the identifier for your city and you will need it later on.

Putting all together

Back to your .conkyrc file, scroll down to until you see the line

# stuff after ‘TEXT’ will be formatted on screen
TEXT

As stated in the statement, anything that is placed under the word TEXT will be displayed on the screen. There is a certain syntax that you need to follow to get it to display correctly and beautifully.

The following is my configuration . You are free to copy and modify.

TEXT
${font Radio Space:size=30}${color5}DAMIEN'S PC
${voffset -20}${color1}$hr
${voffset -20}${font Radio Space:size=14}${color1}${time %A %d %Y}
${font Radio Space:size=55}${color1}${time %H:%M}
${voffset -15}${font ConkyWeather:size=36}c ${font Verdana:size=15}${voffset -5}${execi 3600 conkyForecast --location=SNXX0006 --datatype=LT} / ${execi 3600 conkyForecast --location=SNXX0006 --datatype=HT}
$stippled_hr
${font Verdana:style=Bold:size=9}${color1}Yahoo: ${font Verdana:size=8}${execi 600 conkyEmail --servertype=POP --servername=pop.mail.yahoo.com --username=xyz --password=xyz --ssl} new emails
${font Verdana:style=Bold:size=9}${color1}Gmail: ${font Verdana:size=8}${execi 600 conkyEmail --servertype=IMAP --servername=imap.googlemail.com --username=xyz --password=xyz --ssl} new emails
$stippled_hr
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}CPU1: ${font Verana:size=8}${cpubar cpu1 10,150} ${cpu cpu1}%
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}CPU2: ${font Verana:size=8}${cpubar cpu2 10,150} ${cpu cpu2}%
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=8}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${font Verana:size=8}${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${top name 4} ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top mem 4}
${top name 5} ${top pid 5} ${top cpu 5} ${top mem 5}
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}RAM: ${font Verdana:size=8}${mem} / ${memmax} (${memperc}%)
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}SWAP: ${font Verdana:size=8}${swap} / ${swapmax} (${swapperc}%)
$stippled_hr
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}IP Address: ${font Verana:size=8}${gw_ip}
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}Total Download: ${font Verana:size=8}${totaldown eth1}
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}Total Upload: ${font Verana:size=8}${totalup eth1}
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}Up Speed: ${font Verdana:size=8}${upspeed eth1} Kb/s ${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}Down Speed: ${font Verdana:size=8}${downspeed eth1} Kb/s
$stippled_hr
${font Verana:style=Bold:size=9}To Do List
${font Verana:size=8}${execi 30 cat /home/damien/TODO.txt}

Some of the commonly used syntax involve:

${font Verdana:style=Bold:size=12} – This means setting the displayed font to Verdana of size 12 and bold. You can modify the font or the size to suit your desktop. A thing to note is that it only supports fonts that are installed in your system. To get new fonts, you can go to dafont.com and download your favorite fonts at no charge at all.

${execi 3600 …} – The execi syntax allows you to execute external scripts. Note that we use the execi syntax to check your email address, weather forecast and also to read a TODO list file and output to the screen. The number behind the execi determines the interval (in sec) for Conky to execute the scripts.

$hr / $stippled_hr - This is to insert a horizontal line in the screen. The $stippled_hr syntax refers to a dotted line.

${execi 3600 conkyForecast –location=SNXX0006 –datatype=LT} – This is the execution code to retrieve Weather information from Weather.com. Note that you need to replace the --location=xyz by your city’s identifier.

${execi 600 conkyEmail –servertype=IMAP –servername=imap.googlemail.com –username=xyz –password=xyz –ssl} – This is the execution code to retrieve information from your Gmail and Yahoo mail account. To enable IMAP service, you will need to enable the IMAP setting in your Gmail account (Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP)

${execi 30 cat /home/damien/TODO.txt} – This is the execution code to read my TODO list file located in my Home folder and display it on the screen

For more information on the syntax, check out the Conky variable site.

Testing out your Conky

When you are done with your setting, in your terminal, type

conky

to get it running, and

killall conky

to terminate it.

Start Conky everytime you log in

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions and click Add. Fill in the field as shown below

Conky will now load up automatically next time you log in to your system.

This is a screenshot of my Conky setup. Not really the best, but it does clean up my desktop in an elegant style.

Click to enlarge

I am sure you have a much better setup than mine. You can share your conky screenshot by leaving a link in the comment or email me at damien [at] maketecheasier.com

Useful resources

• Conky variables
• Conky config setting
• Conky documentation
• My .conkyrc file (Right click and select Save Link As. Rename the file to .conkyrc and place it in your home folder)
• Ubuntu Forum

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