Gmail+Weather+Beauty right on your Ubuntu desktop

Published by ashokgelal
Sep 27

[Update:After being hit severely by 'Digg Effect' when this post made to the front page this morning, this site is back again. Thank you for your patience, Diggs (Buries) and Comments folks! Digg on!]

Update2: Links updated. Instead of serving files from MediaFire, DropBox is used. Also, those of you having problem with weather or anything else don’t forget to read the comments. Thanks to everyone using this post and spreading the words because of which my hosting server is down several times!

Ever wished that you had new mails notifications right on your desktop? Ever wished you knew the weather info right on your desktop? Ever wished you had your hardware information right on your desktop? Ever wished your desktop was productive and beautiful at the same time? Ever wished you didn’t have to use Mac4Lin theme to hide the ‘ugliness’ of Ubuntu’s native appearance? Ever wished you had a desktop that looked as beautiful as mine? Let’s fulfil your wish:

Desktop Screenshot with Gnome-Do

I have already talked about how to make your Ubuntu desktop look beautiful and productive. This time I will focus mostly on Conky. Conky is a lightweight system monitor for X. Not only monitoring system, with a little bit of scripting, it can be useful to know your new mails, weather info etc.

Here I’ve attached all the required files, attached my Conky configuration file and explained how to make your desktop look similar to mine.

[Updated]

  1. Read my previous post about AWN and Gnome-Do.
  2. Install Conky:
    $ sudo apt-get install conky
  3. Download this file and save in your home directory(Right-click, Save Link As…save the file as .conkyrc)
  4. Make a directory scripts in your home directory. Download these scripts, extract and copy them inside the directory you just created.
  5. Download all these fonts, extract and copy them inside .fonts directory in your home directory. If you don’t have the .fonts directory, you need to create it. You might need to have administrative privileges to create this directory.
  6. Open .conkyrc file. Look for this line:
    ${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py yourgmailusername yourgmailpassword 3}
  7. Replace yourgmailusernamewith your username and yourgmailpassword with Gmail password. You might also need to install python-feedparser (thanks Onno and Neil for bringing this to my attention)
    $ sudo apt-get install python-feedparser
  8. To monitor your hard disk and CPU temperature install lm-sensors and hddtemp
  9. $sudo apt-get install hddtemp
    $sudo apt-get install lm-sensors
  10. Now you need to know the location id for your location for weather info. Head to http://weather.yahoo.com. Enter city or zip code for your location and click go. Copy the location ID from the adress bar. For examples the location id for Geneva, Switzerland is SZXX0013, for Kathmandu, Nepal is NPXX0003
  11. Open pogodynka.sh file look for this line kod=USID0025. Replace USID0025 with the location ID you got from step 10 above
  12. If you want the temperature in Celsius instead of Farenheit, find the following line:
    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/"$kod".html | grep -A21 "Current" | sed 's/DEG/°/g' > $plik
    Replace it with:
    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/"$kod"_c.html | grep -A21 "Current" | sed 's/DEG/°/g' > $plik
  13. Create a new empty file in your home directory. Name it weather. Leave the file as it is; do nothing with the file.
  14. Bring Run Applicationdialog box (Alt+F2) type conky to launch it
  15. If everything goes right, your desktop should be looking much ‘cooler’

More info:

[If you want to share your desktop and want me to show the best looking desktops on my blog, shoot an email to admin[at]quicktweaks[dot]com along with the screenshot of your desktop and the conky file (if you wish). If you decide to send your conky file, don’t forget to delete your gmail username and password. Sharing is learning!]

my desktop screenshot

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255 Responses

  1. Jamie Souef Says:

    Great tutorial. It really puzzles me why Ubuntu comes standard with a fugly interface when something as clean and elegant as this is achievable.. This is where linux falls down if you ask me. Very ugly, boring UIs (and that my friends, is what the masses want!)

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 1:29 am

  2. nerdd.net | news and opinion Says:

    I wish I was Mac but now I am happy that I am Ubuntu | nerdd.net…

    \r\nEver wished you had a Mac only because it looks beautiful? Ever wish you could hide the ugly loo…

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 6:20 am

  3. VGH Says:

    Step 10 .

    What do we need to do with location ID. do we need to paste it into the file which is named weather ?. I tried this, but the weather file created gets overwritten by conky each time it is started

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 7:45 am

  4. Bert Says:

    very nice but i have one question:
    How can i get the tempereture in Celcius

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 8:56 am

  5. admin Says:

    @vgh and @bert. The post is updated to cover your questions. Please go through the tutorial once more. Sorry for the inconvenience and confusion.

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

  6. swag01 Says:

    Your panel text is unreadable.

    To do this type this in the terminal: sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooser

    Then go System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser

    Then click the Panel tab and change to Normal Foreground color to white or whatever color is the most readable in a transparent panel.

    Thanks

    Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

  7. Insomniac_vampire Says:

    I cannot get 2 things to work.
    1. The Temperature displays in Celsius but i still have LETTER “F” while it should be “C”.
    2. Gmail checker is not working.

    Help Please. thanks

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 1:49 am

  8. I wish I was Mac but now I am happy that I am Ubuntu « Internet Making Money Says:

    [...] Check it:http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/ [...]

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 1:50 am

  9. Kartik Mistry Says:

    Amazing post. I loved openlogo things with conky :)

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 4:43 am

  10. foobar Says:

    Ugliness shines through, no matter what you do. Look at that non-transparent scroll bar and look at that “XBMC media center” to display its ugly logo and text.

    No themes or nice wallpapers are going to help all those ugly looking bundled in and “3rd party” apps you have to use. Good design and desire for it has to be everywhere.

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 5:14 am

  11. Разгоняем Убунту | Blog - Efremov Sergey Says:

    [...] Смотрим, читаем: Gmail+Weather+Beauty right on your Ubuntu desktop [...]

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 6:05 am

  12. Onno Says:

    If your new mail does not show up (i.e. gmail feed is not read), check your Python modules. I had to install the feedparser module:

    sudo apt-get install python-feedparser

    Onno

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 6:21 am

  13. Sponty Says:

    I’m fairly new to Ubuntu, and I’m having some trouble getting conky working as it’s supposed to. I’ve gone through all of the steps and I’m fairly sure that I’ve done everything properly (of course, if it isn’t working, something’s up).

    Whenever I try to run conky, instead of it opening up on the desktop as beautifully as yours appears, it opens in this ugly little window with tiny white text on a black background. It displays information like uptime, CPU usage, etc.

    I’m wondering if anyone knows what issue I’m experiencing here, and how I might go about fixing it.

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 7:18 am

  14. Sam Says:

    Hey, how do I add CPUs to the conkyrc file? I have a quad-core processor, and I wanna see all my CPUs up there.

    thanks in advance,

    Sam

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 8:50 am

  15. Neil Says:

    This was a very helpful post, thanks. Two notes:
    On my system I had to add:
    “sudo apt-get install python-feedparser” since this module was missing.
    Also, for those wanting Celsius, it is nice to also grep for ‘F’ in the pogodynka.sh script and change these to C.

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 8:54 am

  16. sean Says:

    awesome, just one problem, it wont read my gmail….

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 8:55 am

  17. sean Says:

    scratch that, it works now (thanx Neil) one more question though, is there a way to change the colors? some of it clashes with my background…

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 9:01 am

  18. Zake Naio Says:

    hi. Must say that i loved the tutorial.
    But having a problem with my dual-monitor setup (second screen just showing 420×380ish) i had to reconfigure alot, but thats the fun part right =)

    Now to my problem. I Can not make the weather and gmail to work. Other than that. Puuurfect.

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am

  19. kbean Says:

    i have the same problem as sponty

    conky comes up in a black ugly window, not on the desktop

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

  20. Insomniac_vampire Says:

    Thanks for advice, now my “C” and gmail works now.

    One last thing is the battery bar of mine is not showing.

    Please help.

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

  21. Tim Says:

    Same as sponty too… black box only :(
    any ideas?

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

  22. Tim Says:

    Never mind… it’s always the fine print! :)

    be sure to “save the file as .conkyrc”
    not conkyrc as it would be by default when you save as :)

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

  23. Insomniac_vampire Says:

    I got the battery bar working already by changing to BAT1 in .conkyc

    Thanks all

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 8:50 pm

  24. links for 2008-09-29 « I do Says:

    [...] Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks (tags: ubuntu desktop howto conky) [...]

    Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

  25. Make Linux: Harder - Better - Faster | LinuxHaxor.net Says:

    [...] – Beautiful Conky Setup [...]

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 7:11 am

  26. Sponty Says:

    Ah, you’re right Tim!
    Thanks!

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 8:58 am

  27. Optimize your Ubuntu desktop « 0ddn1x: tricks with *nix Says:

    [...] Optimize your Ubuntu desktop Filed under: Linux — 0ddn1x @ 2008-09-30 16:52:13 +0000 http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/ [...]

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am

  28. Nate Says:

    enjoyed, but i have two problems…
    1. weather isn’t working. i’ve tried to fix it but can’t figure out what wrong.

    2. i am hard wired into my network and this set up won’t show my data streams, how do i fix that?

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 11:34 am

  29. Rishi Says:

    This conky thing is beautiful….however, i’m having issues. I am getting these errors:

    cat: /home/rishijain/weather: Is a directory
    /home/rishijain/scripts/pogodynka.sh: 50: cannot create /home/rishijain/weather: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    tail: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    head: error reading `/home/rishijain/weather’: Is a directory
    localhost [127.0.0.1] 7634 (?) : Connection refused

    the weather thing isn’t working, and the connection refused thing keeps coming. Any ideas?

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

  30. Dave Says:

    I got most of it working however my bars don’t become transparent, is that a something I should set myself manually?

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

  31. admin Says:

    @Dave: Which bar are you talking about? If you are talking about the Battery/CPU bars, then they are not transparent. I’ve given the colors so that they blend with the background and they look if they are transparent ;-)

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

  32. admin Says:

    @Nate: make sure you have followed each and every steps properly to make ‘weather’ work. About network, what data streams are you talking about? Info about your network? conky is also able to show you information about your wireless connection but that depends on your wireless card.

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

  33. admin Says:

    @Naio: After you are done with dual setting don’t forget to share how you did it along with the screenshot of your desktop. You can send me an email at admin[at]quicktweaks[dot]com

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

  34. admin Says:

    @sean there are ways to change the colors. Just declare a color value as
    color1 ffcc00
    color2 ccdd0
    color3 white
    ….so on
    just before the line you want to print include {color1} that’s it

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

  35. admin Says:

    @Neil: Thanx for bringing that to my notice. I will update the post to include this.

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

  36. admin Says:

    Just look for the entries CPU1, CPU2 in conkyrc file and add your additional CPUs. It is pretty self explanatory.

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

  37. admin Says:

    @Onno: Thanx for bringing that to my notice. I will update the post to include this.

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

  38. How to make your Linux harder, better & faster. Says:

    [...] – Beautiful Conky Setup [...]

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

  39. Zeroday Says:

    where is the pogodynka.sh script??

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

  40. Michael Says:

    But it looks so ugly?! Lol…

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

  41. Grizz Says:

    I had this issue when I first started. The instructions tell you to put everything in your home directory. Well, really, it needs to go in home/username in order work. Once I moved the .conkyrc file and the additional folders into ../home/Grizz everything worked as advertised.

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

  42. Trock Says:

    in the scripts folder

    Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

  43. Dac Says:

    Hello,

    I seem to have a problem with starting conky automatically, if I add conky under sessions it loads up with a kind of black frame around it and it stays on top of every window.

    It only works good if I start it up manually (Alt F2, Conky).

    Any advice?

    Thanks

    DaC

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 6:04 am

  44. pandi Says:

    Wow, this is really great! I just recently found conky, and now this makes it even better. If anyone is interested, I wrote a little script a couple months ago that puts a continuously updating day & night map of the earth onto the desktop, with ~current cloud coverage, to make it look pretty. You can check it out here if you like: https://sites.google.com/site/sweetlinuxstuff/day–night-desktop

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 6:05 am

  45. Jim R Says:

    Run in the ALT-F2 box:

    conky -c ~/conkyrc

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 6:34 am

  46. Jeff Says:

    One change i would and will make is to use eterm instead of terminal. you can get a totally transparent terminal that “sits” on the desktop like conky with a few command line switches. I use it now and will use it once I apply this . If anyone is interested in the switches, please let me know. I will email them or post them here when i get home if anyone wants them.

    Also, does anyone know how to get the forecast in teh weather?

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 7:01 am

  47. WladyX Says:

    Ablosutly awsome desktop!! I really, really love it, and i’m really picky about desktops, i’ll try it later! It rocks! Thanks for sharing.

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 8:32 am

  48. CyberCowboy Says:

    Any idea how I’d modify the script to tell me if a different e-mail account (has IMAP and POP3 access) has mail rather than GMail?

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am

  49. admin Says:

    @Jeff: We like to see what you have got, for sure. If you want to share anything with us, you are most welcome. You can shoot an email to admin[at]quicktweaks[dot]com. If it deserves to be shared with others, I will certainly post it under your name.
    Thanks

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 9:03 am

  50. Del.icio.us op 1 oktober 2008 | Michel Vuijlsteke's weblog Says:

    [...] – Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks mfff (tags: theme [...]

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 9:06 am

  51. admin Says:

    @CyberCowboy: the idea of getting mails from GMail is very simple – GMail allows to read mail as feed. Any other mail provider which facilitates reading mails as feed should fit well with conky. I don’t have any other accounts other than GMail but I will try to figure it out. In the meantime, if you figured out anything, don’t forget to share with us.

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 9:07 am

  52. admin Says:

    Unfortunately, that’s the problem with everyone. Starting conky automatically doesn’t work well. It loads up with a black frame and sits on top of every window. I’m also trying to figure it out and as soon as find a way to make it work, I will update the post. So, keep coming back.

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 9:18 am

  53. Paul Says:

    Looks good? Yes. Useful and easy to use? Nope.

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am

  54. zelrik Says:

    That’s partly due to the fact that ubuntu can be installed on any computer …new or old and I am not sure that you can do that on an old computer.
    The ubuntu team is working on it as you can read on Mark Shuttleworth’s blog.

    PS : OMG They should fix that webpage, I hate when I have to write in a box that is black over black!!! I have a black theme and that page doesnt like it, and my theme isnt the one to blame.

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 3:32 pm

  55. Jamie Souef Says:

    That’s a good point about Ubuntu supporting old hardware, but at the same time support should be there for new PC. Legacy support is one of the reasons Windows Vista is the way it is.

    If people want to keep there old PC’s they should be satisfied:) with old software :)

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm

  56. Boycott Novell » Links 01/10/2008: New Ubuntu Theme, Fedora 10 Beta Says:

    [...] Gmail+Weather+Beauty right on your Ubuntu desktop [...]

    Posted on October 1st, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  57. showtime Says:

    Hey There

    All is working perfectly loving the look. I’m wondering how to get my conky to update, my time and weather etc all stay the same, is there any way I can accomplish this?

    Thanks Bud

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 am

  58. Dave Says:

    Hi! Thanks for sharing this. “Default” Ubuntu theme looks like a 70′ sci-fi movie watched today… jaw dropping & laughable.

    Maybe just a silly question from a ubuntu rookie – how do you make such mac style menu bar at the bottom?

    Once this is known, I switch to this 21st century desktop immediately

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm

  59. ashokgelal Says:

    @Dave:
    Read my previous post Three Little Things To Make Your Ubuntu Desktop Beautiful and Productive on how to make Mac style menu bar (BTW it’s called dock bar).

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm

  60. Rick Says:

    Not really sure what I did wrong but for whatever reason all the icons that should be there for conky are instead replaced by single letters . . . also I did the weather just as said in the tutorial and I’ll I’ve got is F / F . . . any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm

  61. ashokgelal Says:

    @Rick: It seems that you haven’t copied all the required fonts. Make sure you have downloaded all the fonts and have copied it inside /your home director/fonts directory. Also, to change F/F to C/C, look for F/F in pogodynka.sh file and replace with C/C. Let me know if it worked.

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm

  62. m.ost Says:

    I love all the mods you made to the desktop, but I’m having one problem. Conky runs fine, but instead of the transparent sleek look that you have, mine simply runs as white text on a black backround. Do you know where i might have gone wrong?

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 5:09 pm

  63. Rick Says:

    Yep that did it, thanks.

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm

  64. Rick Says:

    Okay I guess I lied – the icons are there now but still no weather. I changed the info in the script and made a weather file but still nothing.

    Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm

  65. WladyX Says:

    for imap you can find here a rc file and imap script:

    http://conky.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

    Posted on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 am

  66. Zeroday Says:

    i found a scripts folder in my home directory but theres no pogodynaka.sh file :-(

    Posted on October 3rd, 2008 at 2:35 pm

  67. Zeroday Says:

    hello this should fix the problem with the startup of conky, it doesnt take over the section of the desktop

    use_xft yes
    xftfont verdana: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
    double_buffer yes
    draw_shades no
    draw_outline no
    draw_borders no

    can someone help me find the script folder? i found one but it doesnt have the pogodynka.sh file :-(
    stippled_borders 10
    border_margin 4
    border_width 1
    default_shade_color grey
    default_outline_color black
    default_color BADCDD
    use_spacer none
    no_buffers yes
    uppercase no
    color1 F8DF58

    Posted on October 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm

  68. Zeroday Says:

    my bad its

    use_xft yes
    xftfont verdana: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
    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 BADCDD
    use_spacer none
    no_buffers yes
    uppercase no
    color1 F8DF58

    Posted on October 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm

  69. Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex - A Designer/Developer makes the switch » » Assault Blog Says:

    [...] getting GMail and the weather on my desktop with Conky, I personally think I have something a bit better than the silly widget dashboard from OSX! You can [...]

    Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

  70. david Says:

    fix:
    delete weather directory:
    $ rmdir /home/rishijain/weather
    create a file called directory:
    $ touch /home/rishijain/weather

    thats all.

    Posted on October 11th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

  71. Ebtoulson Says:

    Hey guys. I can’t seem to get my gmail or weather to work. I’ve started over twice now but still nothing. (Everything else works perfect).

    Heres a pic
    http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn74/Ebtoulson/Screenshot.png

    Posted on October 11th, 2008 at 11:50 pm

  72. Emma Says:

    Hello, nice conky.
    Do you know how to add the forecast, like something saying: “tomorrow: sunny 25º/9″ or something?

    Posted on October 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm

  73. stat Says:

    Great tips here. I love conky but this has helped me go to another level and so simple. Well written, thank a lot for the post.

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 9:32 am

  74. Ce frumos se poate configura Ubuntu ! Says:

    [...] ai Ubuntu si vrei sa arate ca in screen shot-ul de mai sus, atunci urmeaza tutorialul conky si tutorialul AWN. Eu inca nu am testat, deoarece deocamdata am ajuns la un status quo cu ubuntul [...]

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 11:07 am

  75. Ravnos Says:

    Ok, I found a solution to the black background thing for KDE3 users. Might work for Gnome users too, but I don’t know if it’s the same problem. Basically, conky sets its background using the root window, and KDE’s background is not on the root window. The easiest way to make the two match is using an app called feh. I found it in the Mandriva repos, I’m sure (k)Ubuntu’s repos will have it too. Install it and type “feh –bg-center `dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 1`. If you use a background that’s not the same resolution as your desktop, you’ll need to use –bg-scale instead of –bg-center. KDE4 users will have to change the dcop part of the command to whatever the KDE4/D-Bus equivalent is (I’m not using KDE4 yet, so I’m not sure.) Gnome users would obviously have to find another way to get their background info in there. After this, conky should be transparent.

    You can add this to your .conkyrc as an exec line to make it run automagically when conky starts, or run it with your autostart. I am still looking for a good way to get it to work with rotating desktops. The easy solution would be to use execi or texeci in my .conkyrc and have it run it every so often, but that seems like it would be more resource intensive than I would like. Ideally, it would run with the changeWallpaper command, so if anyone knows how to do that, I’m open to suggestions.

    Found this solution at http://briancarper.net/2006/08/25/transparent-conky-in-kde-part-2/ . Hopefully someone finds it as helpful as I did.

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

  76. Monitor everything from your desktop « 0ddn1x: tricks with *nix Says:

    [...] Monitor everything from your desktop Filed under: Linux — 0ddn1x @ 2008-10-24 19:47:13 +0000 http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/ [...]

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

  77. justin Says:

    sweeet!! thanks i was wondering how this could be achieved. thanks for posting.

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

  78. JoshP Says:

    Anybody having problems with network info.. you might have to change the lines that eth1 to eth0 in your .conkyrc

    type ‘ifconfig’ to see which one you should use

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  79. justin Says:

    i would love to know how to install eterminal and have it transparent and all. :) i am newbie…

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

  80. justin Says:

    hello, this is fabulous but having 2 problems…

    1.hdd temp not working, however when i installed it it asked me if i wanted to have it automatically loaded up when comp starts. i said no but can change this. was wondering if ppl ran into this prompt when installing as well.

    2.battery is not showing. the above post that mentioned BAT1 i didnt get it to work.

    o yea! and my gmail is showing how many emails i have and such but i cant click on it??? i thought you be able to click on it to open you email.. but no such link?

    thanks so much, i am newb no doubt.

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

  81. justin Says:

    almost forgot, how do you change from military time to standard?? i looked in the files but i didnt see how i could change it. thanks:)

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

  82. j13 Says:

    Umm, I get letters instead of pictures on the sidebar
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zdxdqdbnlo2
    mediafire decided not to show it as a picture >_>

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

  83. B On The Move - Tech News » Blog Archive » Beautifully Minimalist Conky Setup [Featured Desktop] Says:

    [...] pictures come from Quick Tweaks’ detailed Conky how-to, which explains how to set up Gmail monitoring, Yahoo Weather updates, and statistics from your [...]

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

  84. Jim Says:

    I get a weird failure like this on Kubuntu 8.10:

    Conky: desktop window (1c0006d) is subwindow of root window (188)
    Conky: window type – override
    Conky: drawing to created window (0×3a00001)
    Conky: drawing to double buffer
    X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
    Major opcode of failed request: 2 (X_ChangeWindowAttributes)
    Serial number of failed request: 167
    Current serial number in output stream: 168

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

  85. Craig Says:

    I seem to be having a problem with the line in the script that dumps the weather page.

    As written, I get no output in the weather file. The only way I can get anything at all is to remove the grep and sed statements, which returns the entire page.

    I have also tried w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”_c.html > $plik | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’.
    It still just outputs the full page but seems to grep and find “Current” correctly (highlighted in the file) and on my desktop, it shows the cloud icon then “C / .Sports C” so it is parsing the file and grabbing the bullet and the word Sports.

    So confused…

    Thanks,
    craig

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

  86. ashokgelal Says:

    @justin:
    Open .conkyrc file in a text editor. Find the following line:

    ${font Radio Space:size=55}${time %H:%M}

    Replace H with I (I as in ice-cream)

    It should look like this:

    ${font Radio Space:size=55}${time %I:%M}

    If you want to show am/pm too, add %p just after %M:

    ${font Radio Space:size=55}${time %I:%M %p}

    Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

  87. Bruce Says:

    In pogodynka.sh replace

    echo $temp F / $tempo F

    with

    echo $temp C / $tempo C

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 12:32 am

  88. Bruce Says:

    Make sure you did step 5. Install the fonts!

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 12:34 am

  89. Bruce Says:

    To get the battery going see
    http://linuxinside.blogspot.com/2008/03/set-battery-in-conky-correctly.html

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 12:44 am

  90. Husam Says:

    Is Gnome-Do skinnable or does it adapt to the desktop theme?
    If it is skinnable can someone please explain how I can make
    it look like the screenshot above?

    Awesome desktop btw :)

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am

  91. Flail Says:

    I am really enjoying this setup, thanks for all the work.

    That being said, I’m having two problems that I can’t seem to find a solution for, so any help would be really appreciated :)

    1. The icon for weather shows up as a vertical rectangle.

    2. Most of the lines that should be blank show up with a vertical rectangle (which I assume is the new line character)

    I’ll keep messing with it, but any suggestions would be great. Thanks!

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 11:39 am

  92. Fisk Says:

    Any way to use this with Google Reader instead of Gmail?

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

  93. yaka Says:

    hi i got conky working but its not transparent, i can see my background image. but if any icons/folders are behind it i cant see them

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

  94. Chris Bookwood Says:

    Thanks for the great conky scripts, It fits perfect on my desktop.

    One thing though – I can’t seem to get the the Gmail and the Up&down and Upload/Download to work… I have tried everything I know, but still dead they seem.

    I wonder if the gmail problem can have anything to do with the dot in my gmail username? (some.thing)

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

  95. Beautifully Minimalist Conky Setup [Featured Desktop] @ ZDima.net Says:

    [...] pictures come from Quick Tweaks’ detailed Conky how-to, which explains how to set up Gmail monitoring, Yahoo Weather updates, and statistics from your [...]

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

  96. deeaycee Says:

    Check to make sure that when you saved the file .conkyrc , that it saved as that file name and NOT conkyrc.htm . When I right clicked to save the file, the name defaulted with the htm extension and it took me a bit to finally figure out what happened. Good luck.

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

  97. firecode Says:

    Seems great. Sadly on my machine conky launched itself in a terminal and doesn’t read the config file. But I never succeeded in installing anything on Linux so it’s probably my fault.

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 4:43 pm

  98. justin Says:

    thanks man appreciate it :)

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

  99. justin Says:

    ahh! dope, thanks bro, so “I” stands for standard i guess…thanks a bunch peace

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

  100. Halp! Says:

    Do I have to do something specifically with the fonts after putting them in a the fonts folder? Install them somehow? That picture is exactly what my desktop looks like.

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 6:00 pm

  101. Damon Says:

    I edited the .confyrc file to update the date at the bottom thus:

    ${font Radio Space:size=14}${time %A}
    ${font Radio Space:size=14}${time %d %B %Y}
    ${font Radio Space:size=55}${time %H:%M}

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

  102. justin Says:

    hey, thanks for everyones help, i am wondering though how to make it smaller, of rather not as wide. its taking up 1/3 of the desktop. i have 15.4 screen with resolution at 1280×800. this seams to be the max i can make my resolution when i go to “screen resolution.” dont know if this has anythign to do with it.

    also, the email is showing how many emails i have but i cant click it to take me to my email…peace

    also, the weather doesnt seem to update. is there a way to make it update more quickly. srry for all the question, just wanna get this working top notch, :)

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

  103. Paul Says:

    To Husam:
    Right click on the Gnome-do icon in your notification area and choose preferences. Go to appearance and then theme. If you want it to look like in the picture choose glass frame.

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

  104. mike Says:

    I couldn’t get the gmail script to work since I have special characters in my password that it won’t allow.

    My solution was to manually edit the pogodynka.sh file change
    uname=’myusername’
    password=’mypassword’
    maxlen=3

    I then changed the .conkyrc file so that the line that calls the gmail parser no longer references the username and password there.

    ${color F8DF58}${font FreeSans:size=16}@${font}${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py}

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 9:32 pm

  105. mike Says:

    I meant the gmail_parser.py file not the pogodynka.sh file

    Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 9:32 pm

  106. Halp! Says:

    Nevermind, I figured it out but I still can’t get the weather to work. It just says F/F instead of displaying temperatures next to the F’s. Also there is no sun but the other fonts have been intalled. Hmm… anybody know what’s up?

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 1:05 am

  107. Chris Bookwood Says:

    Now I got the gmail working by hardcoding the data into the gmail_parser.py file, but still no luck getting up/downspeed and upload/download working. They just still on 0…

    Two minor thing… Why is there two CPU’s, and is the weathercast pretty bugger on your machines too? It seems to be only 1 time out of 3, that i shows the weather-’photo’.

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 1:25 am

  108. zach Says:

    When i run conky as a startup program, it overlaps all my other programs. Any help?

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 2:10 am

  109. Chris Bookwood Says:

    Yeah – I have the same problem too!

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 4:27 am

  110. ashokgelal Says:

    @yaka: That’s normal

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am

  111. ashokgelal Says:

    @Chris: Yes, email ids with ‘.’ often cause problem. You can try putting \ in front of ‘.’ . I don’t have any email address which has . in it so can’t say for sure. As soon as I find some solution, I will let you know. If you figured out how to do it, please share the solution here.

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am

  112. ashokgelal Says:

    @firecode: There should be something horribly wrong. In situation like this, I try to start everything from start. I’ve written this tutorial in a way even a first-day Linux user can do it. I suggest you to go from start, downloading different files, putting them in correct places. It should work flawlessly believe me.

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 10:24 am

  113. Chris Bookwood Says:

    I found, that if you wait about 10 seconds (depending on your machine, but that worked for me) it will start up all nicely… What I did was, I created a shell-script which I threw the following code in, and then I run that on startup.

    #!/bin/bash
    sleep 10 && conky;

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am

  114. ben Says:

    “own_window_hints below” in my .conkyrc sorts the window always on top problem (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=277369)

    bit of window flickering on refresh – lifehacker recons double_buffer should sort it – but i see it is already enabled in the supplied file. (found this at – http://lifehacker.com/5067341/customize-conky-for-ambient-linux-productivity)

    I cant get at my gmail going, but otherwise niceone :) thanks for the tutorial…

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

  115. jaydei Says:

    In the conkyrc file, changing the own_window_type parameter from “override” to “normal” (without the quotes) seems to fix this for me. Hope this helps.

    Posted on October 26th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

  116. Tenzin Monlam Says:

    Hi, I was facing this issue and after quick search I found very good post that resolved my issue.

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=357807

    Do this:

    Go to your home folder, and create a new document. Call it something like ‘.conky_start.sh’ It should contain the following

    #!/bin/bash
    sleep 6 && conky;

    The # after ’sleep’ tells the computer how long to wait until starting conky. This way you can wait until after the desktop is drawn, and then put conky on top of it

    Then do a chmod on it and add execute privileges

    sudo chmod +x .conky_start.sh

    Finally, go to system -> prefeneces -> sessions
    pick the ’statup’ tab
    remove the conky entry
    click add
    browse for your ‘.conky_startup.sh’ file

    and you should be good to go.

    By the way, everything seems to be working fine but I seems to have a problem with the text alignment. They are not sticking. Specially in the case of the processor & memory usage status.
    Here is the screen shot of the conky (issue is highlighted in green).
    screen shot: http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4680/screenshotrr6.jpg
    .conkyrc: http://drop.io/conkyrc
    Thanks for the great post. You really changed my desktop , now it is more polished. Thanks a millions..

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 6:41 am

  117. ashokgelal Says:

    @Tenzin Monlam: Thank you so much for taking some time showing us how to do it. I’m glad that me and quicktweaks.com were able to help you make your desktop damn cool!

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 9:54 am

  118. Conky, monitor ligero para el Sistema « Ubuntu Life Says:

    [...] la imagen superior del articulo. Las instrucciones de como conseguirlo estan tomadas del siguiente enlace. Los pasos [...]

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

  119. j13 Says:

    I did follow step 5. However, it did not work for me until I rebuilt my font cache by opening up the terminal and running:
    sudo fc-cache -f -v

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

  120. danny Says:

    hi,

    a few problems on my end, firstly the conkyfonts.tar.gz file you linked isn’t hosted by mediafire any more for some reason, (all the fonts you list are free on the web tho!) so it took a little fiddling to get the fonts right.

    if anyone is having trouble installing the fonts then create a fonts directory in your home dir and try this

    cd fonts
    sudo cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype

    you might need to rename some of them depending on where you found them, check in the .conkyrc

    fc-cache -fv (this will refresh all your fonts)

    the other problem i have is that the weather just isn’t working at all. i created a weather file, put my location in the pogodynka.sh changed to celcius but all that shows up is C / C

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 7:50 pm

  121. DW Says:

    Man, I couldn’t get this working. I emailed the admin and they took a look at everything and walked me through what I was doing wrong.

    Thanks a lot guys!

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

  122. Bernie Says:

    The conky fonts are no longer available. I get an error trying to download them. Can someone upload the fonts again?

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

  123. My Current Desktop :Bernie’s Ramblings Says:

    [...] Running Ubuntu 8.10, with transparent panels, souped-up wallpaper and conky. Conky script from here. Filed under: Tech Tips N Tricks, [...]

    Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

  124. jher Says:

    most of the missing fonts can be found by grepping “font” out of the .conkyrc and searching here:

    http://www.dafont.com

    Posted on October 28th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

  125. Bernie Says:

    Thanks, got it working. Oddly, mediafire decided the fonts can be downloaded again.

    Posted on October 28th, 2008 at 11:12 pm

  126. Cody Says:

    When i launch it, it only comes up as a black terminal with white text, i went back and did it from scratch on my other computer with Ubuntu and it is still doing this, not sure why :/

    Any help would well..help :P

    Posted on October 30th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

  127. Ethan Says:

    Hi there,i really want to bring this great effects to my Ubuntu,but i can’t download the scripts and font files from mediafile,could you do me a favor to upload these files to dropbox and send me a share invitation to uptownboy@gmail.com?many many thanks.

    Posted on November 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am

  128. Cyril Dent Says:

    Thanks for this great how-to! It’s simple and easily understandable. However it took me some time to find out why the weather condition icon does not show up on my desktop although the temperature was correct. There is no icon defined for foggy weather in conditions.sh ;-) I added a new line and used the capital D as icon for Fog.
    The other issue was with the HDD temperature. Your screenshot is missing the temperature quantity (°C). When I used Vim to edit the .conkyrc file the quantity was showed correctly but by only grepping the line from the file I found out that the degree mark is not showed correctly. I had to copy/paste it to a text editor and then copy/paste it back to the rc file. After that the conky shows it correctly. ‘Hope it’s clear.

    Posted on November 1st, 2008 at 6:09 pm

  129. NCharles Says:

    I can’t get the gmail to work. I’ve checked the script loads of times and I only ever get @{expcpi} instead of the last 3 emails. Any idea what’s causing this?

    Posted on November 1st, 2008 at 6:32 pm

  130. Nicofff Says:

    For those who have problems with the weather:

    If you pasted the line to change to celcius, check if the ” ” and ‘ ‘ are the correct ones, that worked for me! :D

    Posted on November 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm

  131. Mike Says:

    When I installed it, there was a formatting problem when I pasted into the .conkyrc file. When I manually edited it instead of pasting into gedit, it worked fine with the instructions provided.

    Posted on November 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

  132. Conky, un monitor de sistema ligero | Ubuntu City Says:

    [...] o puedes crear tu propio monitor leyendo la documentación de Conky. Por ejemplo, en Quick Tweaks enocontramos uno muy bonito y con sus instrucciones (en ingles). También puedes usar este, [...]

    Posted on November 4th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

  133. Make the Acer Aspire One More Flexible :: Working… Says:

    [...] Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex) Setting up Avant Window Navigator and GnomeDo Setting up Conky [...]

    Posted on November 5th, 2008 at 7:04 pm

  134. conky ubuntu system monitor « Linux, Solaris y mas Says:

    [...] la imagen superior del articulo. Las instrucciones de como conseguirlo estan tomadas del siguiente enlace. Los pasos [...]

    Posted on November 6th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

  135. tormaser Says:

    tank’s 4 the great post, conky it’s great, but i can’t get the wether stuff works fine it’s only show C/C no sun or cloud or any data, hope somebody can help me

    in terminal i got this lines

    Conky: desktop window (12000b4) is subwindow of root window (58)
    Conky: window type – override
    Conky: drawing to created window (2400001)
    Conky: drawing to double buffer
    sed: -e expression #1, char 1: unknown command: `
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/home/sergio/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 47, in
    readmail(f, int(maxlen)) # Let the feed be chewed by feedparser
    File “/home/sergio/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 39, in readmail
    print ‘ ${color2}%s’ % atom.entries[i].title
    UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xf3′ in position 20: ordinal not in range(128)

    i figure the problem is whit the character ` but i don’t know where find it… tanks 4 advance and sorry 4 my spelling

    Posted on November 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

  136. Purghi Says:

    hello if you have problems with weather check the following:

    first, its possible that you have invalid code in the pogodynka.sh file in line:

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’ > $plik

    check whether you have correct ” and ‘ symbols at the appropriate places to make it look like the above line and not like
    …
    grep -A21 \u201cCurrent\u201d | sed \u2019s/DEG/°/g\u2019 > $plik

    second, you might get no pictures because you have problems with conditions.sh file because of wrong upper/lower case.
    for example, in line:

    if echo “$cnd” | grep -E -i -q ‘partly cloudy’; then

    it can help to change ‘partly cloudy’ to ‘Partly cloudy’.
    the same applies to fair, sunny, cloudy, thunder, rain etc later in the file

    hope this helps

    Posted on November 8th, 2008 at 10:14 am

  137. Erik Weibust Says:

    Is there an easy way to start/stop conky? I find I start it, tweak my .conkyrc, then have to kill -9 the pid for conky, then repeat.

    Erik

    Posted on November 9th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

  138. Jordan Says:

    Hey! I got everything up and running perfectly but was wondering if anyone had been successful modifying the Gmail parser to check GAFYD (Google Apps for Your Domain).

    I tried changing the feed address to my custom one (http://mail.google.com/a/mydomain.com/feed/atom) in gmail_parser.py and changing my username and password in my .conkyrc but now the Gmail checker is just blank after the @ sign in Conky.

    Any ideas?

    Posted on November 10th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

  139. Hacer Linux: Fuerte - Bueno - Rapido | 8chapas.com Says:

    [...] Instlación bonita Conky [...]

    Posted on November 11th, 2008 at 3:37 am

  140. Beautifully Minimalist Conky Setup - Softsaurus.org Says:

    [...] pictures come from Quick Tweaks’ detailed Conky how-to, which explains how to set up Gmail monitoring, Yahoo Weather updates, and statistics from your [...]

    Posted on November 11th, 2008 at 5:39 am

  141. Spacenoodle Says:

    Can we get a repost on the fonts file? I can’t get it working without that file.

    Posted on November 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

  142. Spacenoodle Says:

    Further to my last, file suddenly seems to work. Maybe it’s just some unreliable hosting.

    I’m having trouble displaying HDD temp.

    i check hddmonit.sh and i have tried cutting and pasting the text echo “$(nc localhost 7634 | cut -d’|’ -f4)”

    i get the response

    localhost [127.0.0.1] 7636 (?) : connection refused

    I can get the hdd temp to display in the terminal by typing

    sudo hddtemp /dev/sda3

    what can i do to fix hddmonit.sh?

    Posted on November 12th, 2008 at 1:09 am

  143. tormaser Says:

    Purghi

    tanks now conky it’s complete working on my lap, only got a little issue, i don’t know why some times the size of the bars (Battery and CPU’s) change some times bigger or smaller, if you or anybody know how to fix it… any way tanks again.

    Posted on November 13th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

  144. azmizal Says:

    Got problem to do it. Can someone show it through video such as you tube.
    Thanks

    Posted on November 15th, 2008 at 9:45 am

  145. elbeto Says:

    I have exactly the same problem,

    If you know of a solution please let me know @ riverazo@lycos.com

    Thanks

    elbeto

    Posted on November 16th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

  146. elbeto Says:

    Start: ALt+F2 Conky
    Stop Alt+F2 killall conky

    Posted on November 16th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

  147. danny Says:

    run conky in the terminal when you are testing the configs, then you can either open a new terminal tab and either :~$ pkill conky OR ctrl-c and that also kills it.

    Posted on November 17th, 2008 at 11:48 am

  148. stenbod Says:

    If you change “https://mail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom/” to “https://mail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom/unread” in gmail_parser.py, you’ll also get unread messages within all gmail-labels.

    Posted on November 21st, 2008 at 5:25 am

  149. acrididae Says:

    Thanks for this howto.

    Conky is not displaying my gmail count or my weather. I updated pogodynka.sh and conkyrc as instructed and I have python-feedparser installed.

    I’m running Ubuntu 8.10.

    Any ideas?

    Posted on November 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm

  150. acrididae Says:

    Disregard that last post. I had misnamed my scripts folder as .scripts

    Posted on November 21st, 2008 at 8:20 pm

  151. Canuck Says:

    If you are getting the black terminal make sure conkyrc is named .conkyrc

    Posted on November 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm

  152. George Says:

    I have the a Intel Quadcore processor and set up my conky so I can see all 4 on the desktop, but have one problem: they all are showing 100% output. That isn’t right. Any ideas on how to correct this? Thanks, this is a great and cool tool!

    Posted on November 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am

  153. Richard Says:

    one annoying flaw with the weather is it does not show night time or a moon – when at night it still shows the sun :(

    Posted on November 26th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

  154. smolty Says:

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’ > $plik

    needs to change to:

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”/forecast.html?unit=c | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’ > $plik

    Think yahoo must have changed this on their website. To change the letters from F to C, change;

    echo $temp F / $tempo F

    to,

    echo $temp C / $tempo C

    and remember to put the right location code after kod=
    Save the file.
    Terminal: killall conky (hit enter to close conky)
    conky (hit enter, conky restarts with temp)

    Posted on December 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm

  155. Xara 3D - Raymond.CC Forum Says:

    [...] Here is the tutorial – http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/2…buntu-desktop/ [...]

    Posted on December 9th, 2008 at 12:23 am

  156. Post your desktop... again! - Page 3 - Raymond.CC Forum Says:

    [...] Here is the tutorial – http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/2…buntu-desktop/ [...]

    Posted on December 9th, 2008 at 12:24 am

  157. Sukrit Says:

    Hi. i am using the mac4lin theme. i did all the above steps that you mentioned and then ran conky. All i got was a small black box displaying my system information and no changes to my theme.
    What do i do ?

    Posted on December 9th, 2008 at 6:56 am

  158. AnimateDeath Says:

    This is an awesome write-up for Conky. I followed what you put and everything worked flawlessly except for the weather. But I found that I made a folder called “weather” instead of a blank file. Once I changed this, it worked fine. My other problem was the network up/down wasn’t working but I changed the etho1 to etho0 and it worked as well.

    Thanks for this…. Dugg and Stumbled.

    Posted on December 12th, 2008 at 11:00 am

  159. brightscreamer Says:

    This is way cool, but how do I get Conky to run on the left side of my desktop? Also, I can’t get the weather to show up. :(

    Happy New Year, all!

    Posted on January 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm

  160. Matt Says:

    Cybercowboy: I know your post is old, but if you are still having the issue: while I haven’t tried it (I use gmail, so the script included works great for me) there are arguments you can add in to the conkyrc file that should work for any email you can access via pop or imap. (you can only get the message count, not the actual message content)

    The variables are imap_unseen or pop3_unseen, both with the attributes host user pass [-i interval] [-p port] [-e command]. So….

    ${pop3_unseen imap.gmail.com myusername mypassword 2 995}

    would pull down my gmail unread count every two minutes on port 995 (gmail uses SSL).

    All this and more from:
    http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html

    Posted on January 3rd, 2009 at 9:25 pm

  161. Matt Says:

    Hey – thank you so much for this. It’s awesome. I was able to fix all the bugs in my install, and it works great. I wanted to share a few things I discovered and responses to issues I’ve seen in the comments.

    1- I’m a bit OCD, and I didn’t like having a “scripts” folder and a “weather” document hanging out in my home directory, so I played around and it is actually quite easy to make the necessary alterations to hide the files. Each time you use a javascript in your conkyrc file, the script is identified by a path – I use the gmail and weather scripts (weather is pogodynka and conditions, so it shows up twice). Then, pogodynka and conditions scripts both refer to the “weather” file you need to create. Just search for the one time “~/weather” is mentioned in each script. change all these by adding the “.” in the file path, then change the name of the scripts folder to “.scripts” and the weather document to “.weather” and you should be back up and running.
    Example: “plik=~/.weather” is my new code line in pogodynka.

    2- if you want the upspeed and downspeed to reflect your wired ethernet instead of wireless, you need to change the attribute in the upspeed and downspeed variables in conkyrc. For me, wireless is eth1 and wired is eth0. It’s really easy to find out which is which if you use the Wicd network manager – it lists the adapter names in preferences.

    3- want more variables (and descriptions of variables already included in quicktweak’s awesome conkyrc file?) Find them here:
    http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html

    I’m pretty happy with my new Conky. I take no credit – my changes are very easy mods off quicktweak’s original, but if you want to see an similar alternative:

    Screenshot: http://www.box.net/shared/0jipg4iqk7

    my conkyrc: http://www.box.net/shared/1e8f8xsnjo

    Changelog:
    -Wifi speed and strength
    -filesystem usage of my root and /home partitions
    -adding my swap usage next to my RAM usage
    -minimizing email to only show how many unread I have, not the subjects/senders

    Thanks again for your awesome work!

    And a question…
    my the desktop behind conky flickers every now and then. I can’t isolate it: it’s less frequent then the update cycle, and without the variable gmail lines, conky doesn’t have to shift up or down. Anybody know why this happens?

    Posted on January 4th, 2009 at 1:54 am

  162. ashokgelal Says:

    Great work Matt. Appreciated! Thanks for sharing.

    Posted on January 4th, 2009 at 2:00 am

  163. mzilikazi Says:

    Nice howto. A few minor tweaks later and vola! it’s looking good on Debian too. You can have the Debian logo instead of the Ubuntu logo simply by editing .conkyrc

    TEXT
    ${color 6694B2}${font OpenLogos:size=45} J t

    The ‘J’ is the Debian logo. If you want to look at what else is in openlogos.ttf one way is to use fontforge. Available through your favorite Debian repo.

    Another something….the conkyscripts.gz unarchived is conkyscripts/ but .conkyrc points to ~/scripts so unarchiving that zip file in ~/scripts does not work. An easier way would be something like this:

    wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/83257/conkyscripts.zip
    unp conkyscripts.zip
    mv conkyscripts scripts

    To create the weather file simply use touch

    touch weather

    Thanks for the howto. :)

    Posted on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:28 pm

  164. Michael Shoshani Says:

    I give up. I’ve spent hours, and I cannot get anything to even display.

    There is another conky setup on Lifehacker, and it works just fine. But this one does not, and everything checks out…the directories are correct, I edited the .conkyrc to use the correct directories, I edited all the information in the .sh scripts. Nothin, nada.

    Using Ubuntu 8.10. This is frustrating. There is no window, there are no fonts, there is nothing. It’s as though I typed no commands at all…

    Posted on February 15th, 2009 at 3:22 am

  165. Peregrinati Says:

    If you’re having trouble with the gmail, and you have a slash or dot in your email address or password try surrounding each of them with quotes.

    Posted on February 20th, 2009 at 3:06 am

  166. anthony Says:

    i am not getting any of the arrows all i get are letters can any one tell me how to fix this,,,,, o yeahh very new to ubntu less than 24 hours thanx in advance
    /home/anthony/please help

    Posted on March 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 pm

  167. Sour dish of windows, no more | CUB3D Says:

    [...] getting GMail and the weather on my desktop with Conky, I personally think I have something a bit better than the silly widget dashboard from OSX! You can [...]

    Posted on March 7th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

  168. Kyle Says:

    Hey this is a great howto and is incredibly helpful. I just have 2 questions:

    1. On your screenshot it looks like you have gotten your weather to display both the high and the low, but on my desktop it just displays one temp. Is there any way to change this?

    2. I can not get it to display my wireless up/down speed. Any suggestions?

    Thanks a lot! :)

    Posted on March 8th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

  169. Oliver Says:

    Hi, great job on the conky, I’ve incorporated the weather and gmail into my own and love it. I’m just wondering about the pogodynka script. It seems to be set up to also display other weather information. I’d really like to set it up to display wind, sunrise and sunset but I’m not much of a coder and I don’t speak the language that script is commented in. Help would be greatly appreciated.

    Posted on March 9th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

  170. Oliver Says:

    Never mind, figured out that the comments are in Polish. Now I know what all the variables are and what to uncomment.

    Posted on March 10th, 2009 at 12:51 am

  171. Kyle Says:

    My conky also randomly changes size…

    Posted on March 13th, 2009 at 6:12 pm

  172. EuropaCar Says:

    Excellent

    Although I have just one problem. If I start conky while not connected to the internet and subsequently connect to the internet, conky doesn’t update weather/gmail. I have to restart it.
    Any fix to this?

    Posted on March 21st, 2009 at 1:16 pm

  173. All about Conky | nikoboxxx.com Says:

    [...] QuickTweaks conky post Davmac’s conky ubuntuforums.org extensive and very long post with many conky screenshots Conky on GNOME-look.org [...]

    Posted on March 22nd, 2009 at 8:14 pm

  174. SumthingWicked Says:

    For some reason, the upload/download indicators always read zero. I’ve seen in the comments a couple other people have had the same issue but I didn’t see a solution. Anybody have any insight?

    Posted on March 26th, 2009 at 12:51 am

  175. Show Your Linux - Page 149 - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net Says:

    [...] can be found from Yahoo Weather Original credit for the inspiration/weather script goes to this site. Wheres the love for amd!? Famous logo font doesn’t have it [...]

    Posted on March 31st, 2009 at 12:00 am

  176. Jimmy Says:

    My weather’s not working at all, so I would like to try out your advice. However, I cannot find the line
    if echo “$cnd” | grep -E -i -q ‘partly cloudy’; then
    in pogodynka.sh

    Posted on April 1st, 2009 at 8:52 am

  177. William Gates III Says:

    It works BEAUTIFULLY!!!

    I had to change the:

    weather po….sh to accomodate all the info that
    was captured in the “weather” file to include
    sunrise/set times; visibility; air pressure.. as well
    as chaning the network ^ from eth1 to wlan0.

    But it looks awesome!

    The Sumarize Windoze port isn’t bad either..

    Great job!

    Posted on April 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

  178. kaushik Says:

    weather and email are not working for me can u help me to enable

    Posted on April 16th, 2009 at 6:52 am

  179. ashokgelal » Blog Archive » Being on LifeHacker’s #4 Says:

    [...] the big news for today is that my post on conky setup(Gmail+Weather+Beauty right on your Ubuntu desktop) which was published last year grabbed #4 [...]

    Posted on April 26th, 2009 at 12:43 am

  180. Dispelled.ca » links for 2009-04-26 Says:

    [...] Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks [...]

    Posted on April 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

  181. greg Says:

    masters of linux out there will someone who can make the text-only look happen like the authors desktop please e-mail me at jesusfreak216@gmail.com i would be very apreciative

    Posted on April 26th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

  182. Daniel Says:

    Hello,

    I have tired to get Matt’s version working, But i cannot get the Wifi portion to work – any ideas?
    Ive made sure that its pointing to the correct device (eth1). The up/down rates work however.

    Everything else is looking great!

    Posted on April 27th, 2009 at 3:30 am

  183. jesper Says:

    you need to add .encode(‘ascii’, ‘ignore’) to the end of line 39.

    So

    print ‘ ${color2}%s’ % atom.entries[i].title

    becomes

    print ‘ ${color2}%s’ % atom.entries[i].title.encode(‘ascii’, ‘ignore’)

    Posted on April 27th, 2009 at 8:23 am

  184. insidious raven Says:

    Hi, I am trying to get rid of the battery bar and a few other things in conky, and I can’t seem to get it to remove anything. I tried deleting lines from the .conkyrc, but it just did not take the changes. What do I need to do?

    Posted on April 27th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

  185. Ben Says:

    Apparently with the latest version of ubuntu something changes, instead of the weather and other info just being in the background, it now is printed on top of other windows (still using the desktop background image) ends up with a 4″ or so smaller viewable window… So some tweaking will have to be done after agreeing via autoupdates to go to the newly pushed out ubuntu

    Posted on April 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

  186. Ben Says:

    duh, forgot to mention my quick fix, change .conkyrc from

    own_window yes
    to
    own_window no

    killed conky and reran, it’s now on the background where it belongs.

    Posted on April 28th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

  187. Fae Says:

    Hi,
    This looks great and seems to be working fine, however, I get this error when I start conky up in terminal (note: that conky appears to work just fine…)

    localhost [127.0.0.1] 7634 (?) : Connection refused

    Thoughts? Is this a problem?

    Thanks,

    Fae

    Posted on May 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 am

  188. Angiiey Says:

    Hey Matt, I was just wondering how you were able to change the way the e-mail read like you said in your changelog. Thanks!

    Posted on May 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm

  189. Jose Silva Says:

    I get the following errors when I run my conky:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/home/user/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 47, in
    readmail(f, int(maxlen)) # Let the feed be chewed by feedparser
    File “/home/user/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 39, in readmail
    print ‘ ${color2}%s’ % atom.entries[i].title
    UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xe1′ in position 40: ordinal not in range(128)

    Only one e-mail subject is show, and “more..” does not show up.

    Any clues?

    Posted on May 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

  190. Jose Silva Says:

    If get any errors related to hddtemp or to the battery, please see this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=964016

    Posted on May 6th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

  191. Jose Silva Says:

    Never mind the previous post, I already saw an earlier reply that fixed my problem. It would be good to add the following to the tutorial:

    To have conky update itself, say every 15 minutes, do the following:

    # crontab -e

    Add this line:
    0,15,30,45 * * * * killall -SIGUSR1 conky>/dev/null 2>&1

    Save and you’re done! Now your weather, e-mail, etc will be updated every 15 min.

    Posted on May 6th, 2009 at 11:44 pm

  192. 8 Beautiful Conky Desktop Monitor Setup | LinuxHaxor.net Says:

    [...]       Download & Instructions [...]

    Posted on May 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am

  193. Douglas Says:

    Hi,

    I was having a problem with the weather.

    I fixed with the following:

    - Go to .fonts folder in your home directory.
    - Rename the font wet____.ttf to weather.tff

    Posted on May 7th, 2009 at 7:06 pm

  194. 8 Bonitas configuraciones para Conky | Snapcodex Says:

    [...] Descarga e instrucciones [...]

    Posted on May 8th, 2009 at 2:08 am

  195. 8 temas para conky | Linux Zone Says:

    [...] Instrucciones y descarga: aquí. [...]

    Posted on May 8th, 2009 at 9:52 am

  196. 8 bonitos temas para Conky | Alejandrox Says:

    [...] Descarga e instrucciones [...]

    Posted on May 8th, 2009 at 11:04 am

  197. Josh Says:

    I can’t get the weather and the hard drive temp to work. I try typing the echoed content of hddmonit.sh file into the terminal, and I get the following warning 

    josh@ubuntu:~$ nc localhost 7634
localhost [127.0.0.1] 7634 (?) : Connection refused
josh@ubuntu:~$ netcat localhost 7634
localhost [127.0.0.1] 7634 (?) : Connection refused
josh@ubuntu:~$ (nc localhost 7634 | cut -d'|' -f5)
localhost [127.0.0.1] 7634 (?) : Connection refused
josh@ubuntu:~$

    And the weather, well, I’m at a loss. Can anyone help?

    On my computer, for the wireless networks to be detected, I changed ‘eth1′ to ‘wlan0.’

    I made all my files and folders invisible and changed the references to them in each config files.

    If anyone has some detailed advice on how to fix the weather and hdd, though, it’d be greatly appreciated.

    Posted on May 9th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

  198. Selezione dei temi più belli per Conky | Omaradsl Says:

    [...] Simple Conky: Download e istruzioni [...]

    Posted on May 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

  199. rossm Says:

    I am not seeing the sun/clouds/whatever the symbol may be representing my weather, however the temperature is pulling correctly from the Yahoo website. How can I get the sun like you have?

    Posted on May 10th, 2009 at 4:13 pm

  200. rossm Says:

    Nevermind, fixed by running

    $ mv wef____.ttf weather.ttf

    Posted on May 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

  201. rossm Says:

    Nevermind, fixed by running:

    $ mv wef____.ttf weather.ttf

    Posted on May 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

  202. Tom Says:

    Hi guys, thanks for all the comments, it helped me a lot.
    I have one remaining issue with the weather, all the rest works.
    For the weather, I have no information displayed at all.
    Here’s the content of pogodynka.sh:

    #!/bin/bash

    # Katalog, w którym znajduje siê skrypt
    sciezka=~/scripts

    # Kod miasta
    kod=BEXX0024

    plik=~/weather
    # sprawdzenie czy serwer jest dostêpny
    #if [ `ping -c1 216.109.126.70 | grep from | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
    # then
    #echo “Serwis niedostêpny”
    #else
    # pobieranie informacji
    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’ > $plik

    I also have the “weather” file in my home directory but it’s empty

    any idea?

    Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 1:58 am

  203. Shane Says:

    What do we add to .conkyrc to imbed @ replies from twitter and tasks from Remember the Milk?

    Posted on May 15th, 2009 at 10:47 pm

  204. carl Says:

    I really like the idea of this whole conky thing but I just can’t seem to get it to work correctly. I searched these posts and I see some people have the same problems as me with the weather and gmail not displaying properly. It also appears as though when the program loads at startup that it displays on top of every other window. When I close the app and re-open it again it displays as it is supposed to. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I could fix this? Thanks

    Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

  205. ben Says:

    This is not working for me, like a poster above me all it does is open up a little window on the bottom of my screen with a default conky script.

    I think the problem is that I had to save everything in home/ben, and not home. How do you save to just home?

    However, I have no idea because I am a newbie.

    Thanks

    Posted on May 20th, 2009 at 8:41 pm

  206. Martijn Says:

    For anyone that is having problems with their GMail checks due to “special” characters in their username or password (think ‘.’ or ‘!’ or even ‘&’) I’d suggest changing the following line in .conkyrc

    ${color F8DF58}${font FreeSans:size=16}@${font}${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py YourGMAILUser YourGMAILPassword 3}

    into:

    ${color F8DF58}${font FreeSans:size=16}@${font}${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py “YourGMAILUser” “YourGMAILPassword” 3}

    (Basically surround username and password with double quotes) That should fix the problems on that end.

    I’d advise this to be changed in the download too since it doesn’t harm other users and makes the script more robust.

    Posted on May 25th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

  207. M Says:

    How do you get the HDD temp in Fahrenheit its only showing up in Celsius, and the end C is not showing up?

    Posted on May 30th, 2009 at 1:00 pm

  208. PAtroox Says:

    i get this in the console:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/home/patroox/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 47, in
    readmail(f, int(maxlen)) # Let the feed be chewed by feedparser
    File “/home/patroox/scripts/gmail_parser.py”, line 39, in readmail
    print ‘ ${color2}%s’ % atom.entries[i].title
    UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xed’ in position 22: ordinal not in range(128)
    how can i fix it?
    thnks!

    Posted on May 30th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

  209. links for 2009-06-03 | wann.es Says:

    [...] Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks (tags: ubuntu linux conky) [...]

    Posted on June 3rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm

  210. Conky pimps your desktop nerd style! « Infinite Blog Says:

    [...] few weeks back I encountered this article while cruising through lifehacker. Up until that point it had never really occurred to me [...]

    Posted on June 16th, 2009 at 11:19 pm

  211. Bill Says:

    I receive the black box as well, described above. I’m thinking I don’t have some depenendencies installed, or I have not followed the instructions. When it says home folder, would it be either:
    /home/
    or would it be
    /home/Billy/ (my username home folder)

    thanks!

    Posted on June 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm

  212. Soulis Says:

    Hello.

    First of all, i’d like to thank you for sharing this awesome conky config. :)

    Now, i’ve managed to get everything working, except for the upload/download and up/down indications. I don’t know why that is, i’ve been trying to figure it out, but nothing. They’re just stuck at 0 Kb/s. If you could help a bit on this issue it would be so great.

    Thanks in advance.

    Posted on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm

  213. Nico Says:

    I think I followed every step, but when I launch conky it runs in a separate window and does not merge with the desktop

    :’(

    Posted on July 9th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

  214. Daniel Says:

    Hi

    i’m still having trouble

    all my icons are shown as Bigger letters

    i did make a .fonts file in my home and added all the fonts that it told me to download. any ideas?

    Posted on July 9th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

  215. Daniel Says:

    i used to have the blackbox also until i changed my conkyrc to .conkyrc maybe that’s same with u

    Posted on July 9th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

  216. Mischa Says:

    This is a minor detail, but I noticed the speeds read Kb/s with a small “b,” which might confuse some people. The variable measures in KB, yes?

    It worked fine for me, after correcting my mistakes (plain “scripts”. as folder name, instead of “.scripts” , and “.conkyrc” instead of “.conkyrc.htm” lol). Thank you very much!

    Posted on July 17th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

  217. tks Says:

    To add a few more weather conditions in the conditions.sh file, could you give us a refrence for the echo statements for the weather conditions.
    ex:
    sunny——’A’
    etc.

    elif echo “$cnd” | grep -E -i -q ‘fair|sunny’; then
    echo ‘A’

    Posted on July 19th, 2009 at 12:26 am

  218. Isa Says:

    I have followed everything but can’t get my weather to work.here is my script:

    #!/bin/bash

    # Katalog, w którym znajduje siê skrypt
    sciezka=~/scripts

    # Kod miasta
    kod=SNXX0001

    plik=~/weather
    # sprawdzenie czy serwer jest dostêpny
    #if [ `ping -c1 216.109.126.70 | grep from | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
    # then
    #echo “Serwis niedostêpny”
    #else
    # pobieranie informacji
    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”/forecast.html?unit=c | grep -A21 “Current” | sed ’s/DEG/°/g’ > $plik

    # ustalenie warto¶ci zmiennych
    stan=`head -n3 $plik | tail -n1`
    temp=`tail -n1 $plik | awk ‘{print $1}’`
    tempo=`head -n6 $plik | tail -n1`
    cisn=`head -n8 $plik | tail -n1`
    wiatr=`head -n16 $plik | tail -n1`
    wilg=`head -n10 $plik | tail -n1`
    wsch=`head -n18 $plik | tail -n1`
    zach=`head -n20 $plik | tail -n1`
    if [ `cat "$sciezka"/pogodynka.sh | grep -x "# $stan" | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
    then
    stanpl=$stan
    else
    stanpl=`cat “$sciezka”/pogodynka.sh | grep -xA1 “# $stan” | tail -n1 | awk ‘{print $2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}’`
    fi

    # formatowanie informacji wyj¶ciowej
    # dostêpne zmienne:
    # $stan opis stanu po angielsku
    # $stanpl opis stanu po polsku
    # $temp temperatura powietrza
    # $tempo temperatura odczuwalna
    # $cisn ci¶nienie atmosferyczne
    # $wiatr kierunek, si³a wiatru
    # $wilg wilgotno¶æ powietrza
    # $wsch godzina wschodu s³oñca
    # $zach godzina zachodu s³oñca

    #echo $stan
    #echo $stanpl
    echo $temp C / $tempo C
    #echo Cisnienie $cisn hPa
    #echo $wiatr
    #echo Wilgotno¶æ: $wilg
    #echo Wschód S³oñca: $wsch
    #echo Zachód S³oñca: $zach
    #echo $stanpl, $temp C

    #fi

    — any help is appreaciated.thx—

    Posted on July 29th, 2009 at 8:19 am

  219. hotmori Says:

    Nice howto. It improved my desktop view in beauty and functionality way. Thanx a lot.

    Posted on July 30th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

  220. Justin Says:

    When I download the conkyrc file it saves it w/o the period in front and displays most of the information in white text on a black background. When I rename the conkyrc file w/ a period in front it gives permission denied for opening the scripts. Any clue as to what I did wrong there?

    Posted on August 8th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

  221. gopargur Says:

    I’m having the same thing. As far as I know I followed all the steps though :\

    Anyone have any suggestions?

    Posted on August 14th, 2009 at 5:47 am

  222. matthieu Says:

    Really.. really stupide remark..

    .. it’s so hard to change the aspect of your gnome/xfce/kde desk?? It’s the reason linux is far away on the other systems, is that you can take an ISO image, burn and install it on a 10 year old PC even with 128mb RAM..

    I really don’t care that people has to buy quad or whatever the amount of CPU core in their machine, it’s only for games or windows!

    Most of “normal” people using it to surf, read mails, watch movies (even not in HD!!..), and watching/storing their photos. Maybe sometimes they even wrote a letter!

    For sure, you need to have an 1000$/€ laptop for this!
    Most people i know, who’s using XP, have only modify on thing on their desktop: the wallpaper!!

    That means that people who really want to have something different on their desk (as me..) take the time for this.

    That means that you do not need compiz whatever, they do not use it! I Put gnu/linuxmint on the laptop of my mother, the only thing she’s using is the browser..

    I modify for her the desktop, i’m sure that she never think of that if i was delivered his version “as is”!

    That how the majority of people using their PC.. and why gnu/linux has to continue how they done it!

    Posted on August 17th, 2009 at 4:04 am

  223. Rowell Says:

    To prevent conky from being above all windows you need to modify your start up script. Change the sleep value to a higher number, for example:

    sleep 35 &&
    conky

    Posted on August 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am

  224. Rowell Says:

    Should be your home folder:

    /home/user/

    Posted on August 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am

  225. Ubuntu 8.10 w/ Avant, Emerald, & Conky | Novum Simulacrum Says:

    [...] also using Conky. Here’s a tutorial on how to get Gmail, weather, and other stats embedded to your desktop with the help of it. For [...]

    Posted on August 22nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm

  226. Jamie Says:

    @matthieu

    I really think you missed my point completely, most probably a language breakdown or something.

    I’m saying that it’s good Ubuntu supports old hardware – but old hardware is also one of the reason why Windows is so bloated, because it supports legacy hardware.

    It’s fine if you want to use old hardware, but you just can’t expect to use new software on it.

    Really, your reply is really, really stupide.

    Posted on August 25th, 2009 at 12:22 am

  227. Rowell Says:

    I’m having a weird problem where my conky setup refreshes every 5 minutes. It’s the same files I used from this post and it didn’t do it the first time I set it up but the time refreshes every 5 minutes. A little problematic when I want to know what time it is. Anyone know how to change this?

    Posted on August 25th, 2009 at 10:47 am

  228. desKrriado Says:

    Thanks, very nice JOB!

    Posted on August 29th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

  229. Tipset » My Desktop by NerdTool Says:

    [...] ちなみに，デザインのセンスは0なのでこちらのサイトのConkeyの設定をモチーフ（パクリ？）にさせてもらいました [...]

    Posted on September 4th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

  230. Daniel Says:

    Gentlemen,
    To fix the weather issue you simply have to replace

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed “s/DEG/°/g” > $plik

    or

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/“$kod”_c.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed “s/DEG/°/g” > $plik

    with the entire line for your location.. yahoo has now places the names of the locations on the directory now.

    Here is an example of a working one.

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/San-Francisco-California-United-States/USCA0987/forecast.html“$kod”.html | grep -A21 “Current” | sed “s/DEG/°/g” > $plik

    or

    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/San-Francisco-California-United-States/USCA0987/forecast.html?unit=c | grep -A21 “Current” | sed “s/DEG/°/g” > $plik

    I have no idea why, but it does work if you change the entire to like to something similar to that.

    Good luck!

    Posted on September 14th, 2009 at 7:49 pm

  231. Dan P Says:

    Hi

    All looks great but a couple of questions:

    i) Is there any way of using another weather provider? I live in Brighton, UK and sometimes the data is way out of date. The UK met office might be better.

    ii) If I get an email with a long subject line it moves the whole shebang across the screen to fit it in. I got one from an online music store today which was about 20 words and it moved it pretty much to the centre of the screen.

    Thanks

    Dan

    Posted on September 16th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

  232. links for 2009-09-28 Says:

    [...] Quick Tweaks » Gmail+Weather+Beauty right on your Ubuntu desktop (tags: conky howto tutorial) [...]

    Posted on September 29th, 2009 at 5:39 pm

  233. Johnny Royal Says:

    I did all the above. Then I walked through it several times. I just get a black background and white fonts that look nothing like the picture above with the nice transparencies and stylized fonts. Is this just a matter of tweaking it further or did I do something wrong?

    Posted on October 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

  234. zomb Says:

    yeah,
    gmail = user:pass = https://user:pass\@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom

    google apps gmail = user%40YOURDOMAIN:pass =
    https://user%40YOURDOMAIN.COM:$pass\@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom
    ;)

    Posted on October 21st, 2009 at 1:11 pm

  235. Michael Says:

    Hi there,

    I love your Conky setup, but I’m have slight problems trying to get the text to wrap for the gmail script – for subject contents

    http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/5344/screenshotmr.png
    I would prefer it to cut off near where the Calendar ends

    Does anyone else have this problem or a way to rectify it?

    Thank You

    Posted on October 22nd, 2009 at 9:18 pm

  236. 10 combinaciones de wallpapers + Conky | Linux Zone Says:

    [...] Tweaks: link. [...]

    Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

  237. Chris Says:

    I followed Daniel ^^ in changing to the correct URL for weather.

    Now the “weather” file” gets the right conditions, such as:

    Current conditions as of 2:53 pm CST
    Fair

    Feels Like:
    69 °F
    Barometer:
    29.66 in and rising
    Humidity:
    53%
    Visibility:
    10 mi
    Dewpoint:
    51 °F
    Wind:
    S 23 mph
    Sunrise:
    6:58 am
    Sunset:
    5:17 pm

    69°

    HOWEVER,

    Nothing shows up in Conky other than a sun and F/Barometer: F

    Any ideas?

    Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

  238. Chris Says:

    Nevermind…I was able to modify the head/tail parts of the pgodynka.sh script to reflect the correct information.

    If anyone in the U.S. needs help with this part, let me know.

    Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

  239. Chris Says:

    Nevermind,

    I figured out the issue with my weather. I had to modify the pogodynka.sh script (with a little help from Google Translate) to get the parameters I wanted to see.

    I had to do some head/tail commands from a terminal and found that the locations for some of the info had changed a little. Modifying the script to reflect these changes worked beautifully.

    Thanks for the great blog!

    Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

  240. edegugli BLOG » Blog Archive » Combinando un fondo de escritorio y Conky Says:

    [...] mismos. Announcement Henrik B. Andersen Bruce ConkyAir Conkyglass Conkywide Deegan Ghost Tweaks [...]

    Posted on November 15th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

  241. Mike Says:

    Chris, you think you can share what changes you made? I think I have the same problem. weather file has proper data, but only a cloud shows up with no numbers.

    Posted on November 16th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

  242. Paul from Reiki Healing Light Says:

    Great blog!!! Very informative and inciteful. Excellent!!!

    Posted on November 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

  243. John Says:

    I have the same thing and this just started a couple of days ago. Would love to get an answer for this

    Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 4:02 am

  244. Chris Says:

    Mike,

    I sent the author the changes, but below is a screenshot then the pogodynka.sh script I used and then the .conky file. I put some comments in the pogodynka.sh file to help understand what I've changed:

    http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7483/ubuntud.jpg

    pogodynka.sh:

    #!/bin/bash

    # Katalog, w którym znajduje siê skrypt
    sciezka=~/scripts

    # Kod miasta

    # There is no real reason for the next variable since I hardcoded the w3m line in the below part of the script. You can comment it out if you like.

    kod=2369693

    plik=~/weather
    # sprawdzenie czy serwer jest dostêpny
    #if [ `ping -c1 216.109.126.70 | grep from | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
    # then
    #echo "Serwis niedostêpny"
    #else
    # pobieranie informacji
    # The below line is a straight capture from the http:// URL for the weather. Go to weather.yahoo.com

    , enter your zipcode and then take the new URL it finds and replace it below
    w3m -dump http://weather.yahoo.com/united-states/oklahoma/b...

    | grep -A21 "Current" | sed 's/DEG/°/g' > $plik

    # ustalenie warto¶ci zmiennych|
    # I had to modify the head/tail commands for my weather output. This is easy, just open a terminal and then run the commands #below in the quotes but with "weather" in place of $plik. Play with the -n# parts until you find the output you want for each #variable
    stan=`head -n3 $plik | tail -n2`
    temp=`tail -n2 $plik | awk '{print $1}'`
    tempo=`head -n7 $plik | tail -n1`
    cisn=`head -n9 $plik | tail -n1`
    wiatr=`head -n15 $plik | tail -n1`
    wilg=`head -n10 $plik | tail -n1`
    wsch=`head -n18 $plik | tail -n1`
    zach=`head -n20 $plik | tail -n1`
    if [ `cat "$sciezka"/pogodynka.sh | grep -x "# $stan" | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
    then
    stanpl=$stan
    else
    stanpl=`cat "$sciezka"/pogodynka.sh | grep -xA1 "# $stan" | tail -n1 | awk '{print $2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}'`
    fi

    # formatowanie informacji wyj¶ciowej
    # dostêpne zmienne:
    # $stan opis stanu po angielsku
    # $stanpl opis stanu po polsku
    # $temp temperatura powietrza
    # $tempo temperatura odczuwalna
    # $cisn ci¶nienie atmosferyczne
    # $wiatr kierunek, si³a wiatru
    # $wilg wilgotno¶æ powietrza
    # $wsch godzina wschodu s³oñca
    # $zach godzina zachodu s³oñca

    #echo $stan
    #echo
    #echo $stanpl
    # Here is the actual output of the script. I set mine to display Temp, Wind, and Humidity on a single line

    echo $temp F // Wind: $wiatr // Humidity: $cisn
    #echo Cisnienie $cisn hPa
    #echo $wiatr
    #echo Wilgotno¶æ: $wilg
    #echo Wschód S³oñca: $wsch
    #echo Zachód S³oñca: $zach
    #echo $stanpl, $temp C

    #fi

    Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

  245. Chris Says:

    2nd part:

    Here's my .conkyrc script, modified so that it shows the output based on my screenshot (I moved portions of the script around, commented out stuff I didn't need, and modified the eth1 to reflect as eth0 for my NIC)

    use_xft yes
    xftfont verdana: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
    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 BADCDD
    use_spacer none
    no_buffers yes
    uppercase no
    color1 F8DF58

    TEXT

    ${font Radio Space:size=14}${time %A %d %Y}
    ${font Radio Space:size=55}${time %I:%M %p}
    # ${color 6694B2}${font OpenLogos:size=45} u t
    ${color BADCDD}${font weather:size=82}${execi 600 ~/scripts/conditions.sh}${color}${font}${voffset -25} ${execi 1200 ~/scripts/pogodynka.sh}

    #${font weather:size=28}x ${font}HDD ${execi 1 ~/scripts/hddmonit.sh}°C

    ${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}v${font} Up: ${upspeed eth0} Kb/s
    ${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}r${font} Down: ${downspeed eth0} Kb/s

    ${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}M${font} Upload: ${totalup eth0}
    ${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}S${font} Download: ${totaldown eth0}

    ${color ffffff}${font StyleBats:size=16}A${font} CPU0: ${cpu cpu0}% ${cpubar cpu0}
    ${font StyleBats:size=16}A${font} CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}

    ${color F8DF58}${font StyleBats:size=16}8${font} Battery: ${battery_percent}% ${battery_bar}

    ${color F8DF58}${font FreeSans:size=16}@${font}${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py dittoisnot@gmail.com 7vailski 3}

    ${color C2E078}${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=16}J${font} Memory: $mem / $memmax

    ${font StyleBats:size=18}P${font} Uptime: ${uptime_short}

    Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

  246. chris Says:

    im having problems getting the icons to be displayed. i have a .fonts folder but i cant save or extract in it, and i cant figure out how to gian admin priv to get around it, any help would be gratefully appreciated.

    Posted on November 26th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

  247. NeuR0t0x1n Says:

    nice theme but gmail isnt working.have the feedparser installed.and cant get the tux and ubuntu logo justt shows as u and t

    Posted on December 6th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

  248. NeuR0t0X1n Says:

    nevermind sorry.forgot about the installing fonts part.works fine :P

    Posted on December 6th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

  249. NeuR0t0X1n Says:

    also whats the letter code for the freebsd demon?you know how in the conkyrc file its u t meaning ubuntu and tux

    Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 6:08 am

  250. ich Says:

    This doesnt work in kubuntu or i failed somewhere?

    Posted on December 9th, 2009 at 11:07 pm

  251. izuan Says:

    This is really cool.. but does any one know what should I do to get the weather working.. I can see the cloud or sun but I cant see any temperature.. what I see is just C/ Barometer: C

    Posted on December 17th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

  252. lee Says:

    seems like some of the lines changed when you pull it down. Here's what I have to get it all working again:

    # ustalenie warto¶ci zmiennych

    stan=`head -n2 $plik | tail -n1` # Conditions

    temp=`tail -n2 $plik | awk '{print $1}'` # Temperature

    tempo=`head -n7 $plik | tail -n1` # Barometer

    cisn=`head -n9 $plik | tail -n1` # Humidity

    wiatr=`head -n15 $plik | tail -n1` # Wind

    wilg=`head -n11 $plik | tail -n1` # Visibility

    wsch=`head -n17 $plik | tail -n1` # Sunrise

    zach=`head -n19 $plik | tail -n1` # Sunset

    Posted on December 20th, 2009 at 2:55 am

  253. drsilk Says:

    Here what i changed to get it all working again. It seems some of the lines shifted around so:
    # ustalenie warto�ci zmiennych
    stan=`head -n2 $plik | tail -n1`# Conditions
    temp=`tail -n2 $plik | awk '{print $1}'`# Temperature
    tempo=`head -n7 $plik | tail -n1`# Barometer
    cisn=`head -n9 $plik | tail -n1`# Humidity
    wiatr=`head -n15 $plik | tail -n1` # Wind
    wilg=`head -n11 $plik | tail -n1`# Visibility
    wsch=`head -n17 $plik | tail -n1` # Sunrise
    zach=`head -n19 $plik | tail -n1`# Sunset

    Posted on December 20th, 2009 at 4:10 pm

  254. Sharee Says:

    Thanks, had the same problem and that fixed it. :)

    Posted on January 2nd, 2010 at 8:52 pm

  255. Sharee Says:

    I could use some help. Nothing is showing in the weather area except "F/F"… I have copied the San Francisco URL from above, and translated the pgodynka.sh script from Polish…but I still don't understand!

    Posted on January 2nd, 2010 at 11:53 pm

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