What's the deal with Conky?

[TNT1]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

[kleskjr]

It is pretty useful! Before I used the System Monitor but it sucks a lot of resources and is not that convenient to look at. I use conky mainly to check which processes are running (CPU time and RAM), temperature of the CPU and a huge clock which I can see from the other end of the room. But of course there are lot more options that can be implemented.

[SlugSlug]

check out the conky screenshots thread - it can be pretty cool

[TNT1]

check out the conky screenshots thread - it can be pretty cool

Yeah, I did... Some of the desktops/themes/dock bars/icons looked awesome, and the conky ruined it...

[Ozor Mox]

Conky is quite a nifty tool, although I get by with the Gnome panel app that shows resource usage at a glance. System Monitor is weird. When you use it to check what resources you're using, the tool itself becomes the most intensive process! I'm sure this won't be the most popular opinion, but I also think there's an element of looking cool with Conky; as if the user is running a computer that is critical to the success of a space mission and must be monitoring things like CPU temperature at all times :P

[TNT1]

, but I also think there's an element of looking cool with Conky; as if the user is running a computer that is critical to the success of a space mission and must be monitoring things like CPU temperature at all times :P

Yeah, pity most of the peeps that post theirs are doing homework, posting on ubuntuforums and assorted crap:)

[bowens44]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

I love having all that info on the screen all time. I like to know the status of my ram, my drives, cpu usage etc with just a glance.

I think a better question would be , why wouldn't you want all of that info on the screen all the time? Not having it there when it's so easily available makes no sense to me......


:)

[TNT1]

I love having all that info on the screen all time. I like to know the status of my ram, my drives, cpu usage etc with just a glance.

I think a better question would be , why wouldn't you want all of that info on the screen all the time? Not having it there when it's so easily available makes no sense to me......


:)

Sorry bud, life's too short for me to worry whether my cpu is at 16% or 17.5% utilization, or whether my RAM is at 20% or 25%...

And what's all this nonsense about system monitor? I go there if there's a process I need to kill, that's it. For the rest of the time, the same comment as above applies...

[pwnst*r]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

Because in Linux, you can.

[TNT1]

Because in Linux, you can.

Yeah. Like I can eat worms. Doesn't mean you should, or have to:twisted:

[pwnst*r]

Yeah. Like I can eat worms. Doesn't mean you should, or have to:twisted:

Except it's about choice. Be happy you have that.

[TNT1]

Except it's about choice. Be happy you have that.

Yeah, yeah, we're all happy with the choice of a free system. Stop side-tracking me...

What's conky for? Why do you need all that info all the time? I mean my one antiX install comes with conky (or something that looks like it) right there... Why? It's not like my computer is some highly strung 2 stroke race bike that I need to keep pretty much on constant life support. The value isn't in the tin, I back up incrementally daily, so I don't care if something hard dies. What I'm driving at, is why do y'all worry so much? Is it just something more to fiddle with? I read a lot of threads asking for help, and a lot of the trouble is caused by continual tinkering.

[pwnst*r]

Get some sleep.

[TNT1]

Get some sleep. Dude? It's just gone 4:30 pm... I still gotta cook, feed the kids, bath, y'know...

[llawwehttam]

I like to use conky to monitor my system temps as I like to keep my machine nice and quiet with the fans turned down. If the temps go up too much I twiddle up the fans on the fan controller.

I also like it as a clock on my desktop and it lets me know if a process is using up too much resources ie a memory leak.

If you don't like it then thats up to you. There are always people who don't like things. That doesn't mean others won't.

I don't like KDE as I like a minimalist setup. It doesn't mean that I think KDE should be eradicated. Its a fantastic DE for some people.

[chamber]

You keep asking what it's for,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_(software)

There you go.

You don't like it?

Don't use it.

[slakkie]

Because you can. I have some stuff in Conky so I don't have to type df manually and/or goto my phpsysinfo page. It tells me wheter i'm connected to my wireless (I don't use network manager), tell's me all kinds of stuff I want to have in a nice little overview. Battery status (charging/discharge, how long it will run, etc etc).

Today I tweaked it a bit, so all the mounts that I have are setup dynamicly in conky.

[TNT1]

You keep asking what it's for,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_(software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_%28software))



your link goes here:
Did you mean: Conky (software) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_%28software%29)
Look for Conky (software on one of Wikipedia's sister projects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Wiktionary-logo-en.png/28px-Wiktionary-logo-en.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiktionary-logo-en.png) Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (free dictionary) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikibooks-logo.svg/30px-Wikibooks-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikibooks-logo.svg) Wikibooks (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (free textbooks) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/25px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiquote-logo.svg) Wikiquote (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (quotations) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/29px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikisource-logo.svg) Wikisource (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (free library) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Wikiversity-logo.svg/30px-Wikiversity-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiversity-logo.svg) Wikiversity (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (free learning resources) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/22px-Commons-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Commons-logo.svg) Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (images and media) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Wikinews-logo.svg/30px-Wikinews-logo.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinews-logo.svg) Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) (free news source)
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Conky (software in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) to check for alternative titles or spellings.

Start the Conky (software article (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conky_%28software&action=edit), using the Article Wizard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard) if you wish, or add a request for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles).
Search for "Conky (software" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Conky_%28software) in existing articles.
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That doesn't help....

[slakkie]

Because the forum broke the link:

this is correct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_(software))

[chamber]

Try this one then

CONKY INFO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_(software))

[anticapitalista]

Yeah, yeah, we're all happy with the choice of a free system. Stop side-tracking me...

What's conky for? Why do you need all that info all the time? I mean my one antiX install comes with conky (or something that looks like it) right there... Why? It's not like my computer is some highly strung 2 stroke race bike that I need to keep pretty much on constant life support. The value isn't in the tin, I back up incrementally daily, so I don't care if something hard dies. What I'm driving at, is why do y'all worry so much? Is it just something more to fiddle with? I read a lot of threads asking for help, and a lot of the trouble is caused by continual tinkering.

You can turn it off very easily in antiX with the conky on/off toggle. No more conky to annoy you ;)

[MooPi]

Conky is GEEKY, & we are geeks. Enough said :-)

[Giant Speck]

Conky only exists to annoy you, TNT1.

[cj.surrusco]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

Because some people want to make sure that everything on their system is behaving properly. If you don't need it, then don't use it.

Sorry bud, life's too short for me to worry whether my cpu is at 16% or 17.5% utilization, or whether my RAM is at 20% or 25%...
Life is to short to glance at the side of your screen, but life is long enough to question why other people use it?

[Calash]

It is a different way to monitor your system resources. Personally I keep System Monitor open all the time. If things are running slow I can quickly see if a process is taking up too much memory, or if something is sending more data on the network than usual.

I assume it is just the geek in me wanting to see what is going on :).

If that type of information does not interest you then it is probably not a good application for you.

[drawkcab]

The idea behind Conky is that all the nerdy ladies at the coffee shop will check out all the custom info displayed on the desktop of your laptop, conclude that you are super cool smart guy that works for a secret government agency or something and they will pounce on you and rip your clothes off.

Basically Conky acts like Axe body spray.

[drawkcab]

The idea behind Conky is that all the nerdy ladies at the coffee shop will check out all the custom info displayed on the desktop of your laptop, conclude that you are super cool smart guy that works for a secret government agency or something and they will pounce on you and rip your clothes off.

Basically Conky acts like Axe body spray.

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

You know not everyone uses conky. Guess who do use conky: people that like conky. Why is this a problem for you?

[Stan_1936]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

I agree with what you're alluding to.

It is a waste of space.

It is very distracting.

I like my desktop to be completely empty.

Personally, I have ALWAYS found Conky to be very annoying.

[juancarlospaco]

The universal reason on LiGNUx:

" Because i can "

[devondashla]

Sorry bud, life's too short for me to worry whether my cpu is at 16% or 17.5% utilization, or whether my RAM is at 20% or 25%...

And what's all this nonsense about system monitor? I go there if there's a process I need to kill, that's it. For the rest of the time, the same comment as above applies...

an easier way to do that is "alt+f2" and "killall"

[Tibuda]

an easier way to do that is "alt+f2" and "killall"

xkill is easier than killall, because you don't have to know the proccess name

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

Examples:

Some people have bandwidth caps; therefore, they must watch their bandwidth usage.
Some people program. It is helpful for them to be able to look to the side of the screen to see the PID and kill it. They can also see how much CPU and memory their program is using.

Some people frequently run multiple operating systems simultaneously as VMs. They can look to see if they can start another VM, or if they need to change the resource allocation of a VM.

Some people do not have a lot of free disk space. They need to delete unused applications, videos, or unused OS downloads frequently. They can look at conky to see the amount of free disk space.

Some people want to check the IP address of the LAN/WAN they are using, especially if they live in an area with a lot of open WiFis.


I could add more reasons.

[Half-Left]

Why complain about what other people use on their desktop? This thread makes no sense at all.

[Bachstelze]

I mean why would you want all that info on your screen all the time?

Because it looks cool to new users. ;) Everyone, myself included, has done it at some point. You grow out of it.

EDIT: Except that I used SuperKaramba, I still have some (http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/8739/desktop20061031fg1.jpg) old (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/8412/desktop20061225ja8.jpg) screenshots (http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/2597/desktop200701234vp.jpg) on my ImageShack account. :p

[ve4cib]

I tend to use it mostly on my laptop to be able to quickly check:

- my IP address (only really matters at university if/when I need to get access to a shared directory from a lab machine)
- my wireless upload/download speeds & totals (VERY important when you're using a 3G connection and don't want to pay extra for going over your monthly quota)
- checking my free disc space (I rarely have more than about 5GB free on my home partition, so it's nice to know if I can download another episode of a TV series I'm watching, or if I have to delete stuff first)
- seeing what process(es) are eating up RAM/CPU (I'm a computer science student -- this matters a lot with some assignments)
- seeing disc I/O speeds (see above)
- monitoring CPU/GPU temperatures (my laptop tends to run hot, so I like to keep an eye on this)

I realize I could do most of this with other programs, but Conky just tosses everything together in one convenient place. Need to check something? Just change to an empty workspace, or minimize everything. Done. Doesn't get much easier than that.

[Giant Speck]

Because it looks cool to new users.

Not as much as stupid, spinning cubes do, though.

[Bachstelze]

Not as much as stupid, spinning cubes do, though.

Cubes are cool too, but they don't beat fire (http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/4624/compiz2tg2.png) and rain (http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/6135/compiz3wo2.png) on your desktop. :p

[Stan_1936]

Sorry bud, life's too short for me to worry whether my cpu is at 16% or 17.5% utilization, or whether my RAM is at 20% or 25%.......

Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnddddd..............


...............chgeckmate!

Agree 100%.