How to Display System Info on Your Linux Desktop

This tutorial will guide you in downloading, installing and setting up Conky, a free, light-weight system monitor for X11 that lets you display system info on your Linux desktop.

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Background

Conky can be used to display everything from your CPU and memory usage to the currently playing file in your media player. It can check your POP email account, CPU temperature, battery percentage remaining, network usage and much, much more.

The Conky Manager contains a whole bunch of presets that you can try out for yourself, and even add your own customizations. It’s also a lot easier to edit and work with the configuration files when you want to create your own preset.

Installing Conky & Conky Manager

Ubuntu

1. Open a terminal and enter:
   

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxmint-tr/araclar

2. Now enter the commands:

sudo apt update

and then:

sudo apt install conky conky-all conky-manager conky-manager-extra

3. At this point Conky and the Conky Manager will download and install themselves. It shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes, but the time will vary based on your Internet connection speed and computer specs. Once it’s done, close the Terminal.

Other Linux Distributions

With most other version of Linux you’ll need to install Conky and the Conky Manager separately.

Display System Info on Your Linux desktop

There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of variables and config file settings for Conky. That’s just one of the reasons you might find starting out with the Conky Manager to be a bit easier. You can try out widgets and themes that others have already created and go from there. Here’s how –

1. Open your App drawer and launch Conky Manager
2. Select the Widgets tab.
3. If you click once on any of the items listed, a preview of that widget will display in the bottom section of the window. When you find one you like, click the green “Play” button (see screenshot below) to start that widget.
4. That widget will now load onto your Desktop.
5. If the widget isn’t borderless – and this happens in Ubuntu more often than it does in other OS’s – it’s easy to fix.
6. With the widget you want to edit selected, click the “Pencil” button.
7. Look for the line:
   

   own_window_type normal

   and change the word normal to desktop – so that it reads:

   own_window_type desktop

   Save the file and re-load the widget. This time it’ll open without a border.

8. Play around with some of the presets and before long your Desktop will thank you for it :)


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