Let others do the work

You can spend a lot of time experimenting with the options in conkyrc configuration file but you don’t need to as there are plenty of preconfigured conkies available at places such as http://custom-linux.deviantart.com or the Conky wiki at https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky/wiki and the good news is there is even an easy way to try them out: ConkyManager ( https://launchpad.net/conky-manager).

Most of the themes that are found on DeviantArt are suitable for use with conky-manager, just need to unpack each archive into your ~/.conky directory (create the directory if it doesn’t exist) then run ConkyManager. This will list all the available themes and you can display any of them by ticking the checkbox next to their name. There’s no practical limit to the number you can view at once and the settings button allows you to make some simple changes to each theme, notably the alignment and offset – several instances of Conky running in the same place isn’t a particularly pretty sight. ConkyManager comes with a startup script that will fire up the Conky instances that you have enabled in ConkyManager, you can use this instead of starting Conky manually.

You would normally set Conky to be run automatically by your desktop’s autostart feature. However, this can cause problems, especially with transparent windows, as Conky may be started before the desktop is fully initialised. It’s a good idea to use a script to start Conky ( asshownintheWhy

noTransparencybox,above) with a sleep command before running Conky, to give the desktop time to settle, eg create a file containing this and make it executable, then set your desktop to run this script instead of Conky. #!/bin/sh sleep 10 conky If you use ConkyManager, it’s conky-startup script already includes a sleep for this reason.