
When the conky command is executed, it looks first for a hidden file in your home directory called. You could copy this file to your home directory:Īnd modify it, or you can create your own from scratch, which is what I am going to do. To generate this screen, Conky uses its default configuration file which is: Some of the figures may be moving about, but if you see this, then Conky is working. You should see the window below displayed. After installing Conky from the PCLinuxOS repository open a terminal and type the word conky. I say candidate as it will only be displayed correctly if the format is correct. Everything after this line is a candidate for display. The second second section begins after the word 'TEXT' on a line of its own. The first section is the configuration section which determines how and where the Conky window and its contents are displayed. The content, however, has been extensively reworked to suit my own requirements.Ī Conky configuration file is a plain text file in two sections, both of which follow a strict format. The original format for this file I picked up from somewhere on this forum a while back, but unfortunately I don't remember who posted it.
#Conky battery status how to
To get started I'll show, step by step, how to build a useful system monitor based on one I use myself - shown below but without transparency. Part two will introduce the use of interfacing to Lua scripts and exploiting the functions in the Cairo libraries. This article will start by showing you some less demanding conky examples, take you through the basics of setting up your own Conky displays, as well as demonstrate the use of shell commands to generate output. Many of the examples use some very advanced techniques not available with the basic Conky which will not be discussed until the second part of the article, by which time I hope to have covered enough theory to allow you to compete with them.
#Conky battery status code
Many of the examples on this website have accompanying code that can be downloaded to use on your own machine. You can display a clock, graphics, weather reports, or whatever your imagination can dream up. The popularity of Conky is such that there are a plethora of examples and downloadable scripts available on the internet, enabling less ambitious users the ability to enjoy some of these extended features.Ĭonky is not limited to displaying boring system statistics. One feature that seems very popular with users is to have Conky display its output with a transparent background seemingly pasted onto the desktop wallpaper.

This allows the more intrepid users to take advantage of some advanced features, which include the use the Cairo graphics libraries. Provision is made for conditional output in form of if-then-else type statements, and the newest version in the repositories now has hooks for the Lua scripting language. Additionally Conky can execute shell functions and output the results on screen. Today, Conky is a mature program offering a great number of configuration options and access to many system features, such as memory usage and network throughput as standard. Conky is available from the PCLinuxOS repositories. The idea was forked from a similar tool named "TORSMO", an abbreviation of "Tyopoyta ORvelo System Monitor" which means something in Finnish and I am sure that author thought it appropriate. Conky is a serious and effective utility.
#Conky battery status tv
The name, the website informs us, "comes from a character in the Canadian TV show titled "Trailer Park Boys," a ventriloquist’s dummy I am told. "Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop." That description is from the official website and rather understates the abilities of this useful little application.
