Beautiful conky

Conky is a light white system monitor that can display system status on your desktop. Not only can you display system status, but you can also setup conky to show the weather, torrents, and mail.

If you don't have conky installed click here

When you start conky for the first time you get this ugly setup of your system stats. But thats ok, you can easily configure conky the way you want it to.

for example this is my conky

Has you can see it shows some of my system stats, but that is easy to get. The trick is more in the way it is displayed, not what stats are displayed.

First thing you need to do, is to create the config file

cd $home

gedit .conkyrc

Now that is done, you need to create the frame that conky will display your stats. Just copy past in to your config file (.conkyrc)

use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
alignment top_right
xftalpha 0.8
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
maximum_width 300
minimum_size 220 5
double_buffer yes
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
stippled_borders 10
border_margin 4
border_width 1
default_shade_color grey
default_outline_color black
default_color white
no_buffers yes
uppercase no

This will create a frame that is invisible and in the left top corner.

Now for this conky to run smoothly there are some requirements, nothing big, just some fonts end another monitoring application. The fun thing with conky is the you can also set it to display other monitoring applications outputs.

fonts are

PizzaDude Bullets
StyleBats
Open Logos
Weather
RsbillsDng

Applications

lm-sensors
hddtemp

After you have installed the fonts and the applications you can setup the rest of the config

TEXT

${font openlogos:size=17}u${font} ${kernel}
${font StyleBats:size=18}P${font} Uptime: ${uptime_short}
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=18}p${font} ${time %A %d %B}


${font StyleBats:size=18}A${font} CPU ${cpu}%
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}J${font} MEMORY $mem / $memmax
${font StyleBats:size=18}4${font} HDD ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /}

${font RsbillsDng:size=18}4${font} BATTERY ${battery BAT1}

${font weather:size=28}x${font} HDD ${hddtemp /dev/sda} C
${font weather:size=28}z${font} CPU ${execi 10 sensors | grep "Core 0" | cut -d"+" -f2 | cut -c1-2} C

${if_gw}${if_existing /sys/class/net/wlan0/operstate up}
${font StyleBats:size=16}N${font} SIGNAL ${wireless_link_qual_perc wlan0}%

${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}v${font} UP ${upspeed wlan0}/s
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}r${font} DOWN ${downspeed wlan0}/s

${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}M${font} TOTAL UP ${totalup wlan0}
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}S${font} TOTAL DOWN ${totaldown wlan0}
${else if_existing wlan0}
${font StyleBats:size=16}N${font} SIGNAL Cabale

${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}v${font} UP ${upspeed eth0} / s
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}r${font} DOWN ${downspeed eth0} / s

${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}M${font} TOTAL UP ${totalup eth0}
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}S${font} TOTAL DOWN ${totaldown eth0}
${endif }
${else if_gw}${color red}
${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}4${font} NO NETWORK
$color
${endif if_gw}

This is the main text, this is what your conky will display and in what way. Now when you run this you will get a conky just like mine.

Some tricks.
Conky can just displays text, so to get some beautiful conky you use some tricks.

Like the symbols in front, they are just fonts. So if you want to use some other symbols, thats easy. just find some font with symbols that you want.

For example I want to have the intell logo so show what possessor I have. I download a font named "Illustrate IT" and see that intell logo is "F"

${font Illustrate IT:size=18}F${font} ${cpu}%

This will look something like this. Intell logo and the possessor load

Now this is just an example of what the conky can look like. But with this information you can create your own in no time. I recommend looking here to see what more stats can be displayed and also just googleing "Conky confing".