During this weekend I did a transition to Mageian Linux http://www.mageia.org/fi/ a great rpm based distribution. I must say that I really like the distro and upon tweaking it I came up with an alternative conky config which is a simple one but yet an effective configuration.

The Conky config file

To get things going we are customizing (or creating) the default Conky file found hidden at user’s home folder and named as .conkyrc .

Note: Your conky location might be different if you used conky -c line to point to an alternative file so remember to change the correct file.

Needed programs for the Conky  Config: Conky and Banshee music player

In Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint: apt-get install banshee conky (as a root or a super user)

In Mageia: urpmi conky banshee (as a root user)

In Fedora: yum install banshee conky (as a root user)

You can of course use graphical program installers and remember that the above lines are just examples.

The Conky config file:  .conkyrc

#  Window rules

alignment top_right
gap_x 170
gap_y 20
minimum_size 220 0
maximum_width 1850
own_window yes
own_window_hints below,skip_pager,skip_taskbar,undecorated,sticky
# font defaults:
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
xftalpha 0.9
override_utf8_locale yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes

## images, buffering, shading
imlib_cache_size 60
double_buffer yes
draw_shades no
default_shade_color 777777

## misc text formatting
short_units yes
pad_percents 0
border_inner_margin 0
uppercase no
use_spacer right

## outlines and borders
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
border_width 0

## stdout/console printing
out_to_ncurses no
out_to_console no

## process settings
top_name_width 5
#no_buffers yes

#### end config

#### Begin display information
## everything below ‘TEXT’ is drawn on screen

TEXT

###More system information###

#Time info
${color green} ${font :size=40}$alignc${time %H:%Mh}
${voffset 10}${font :size=30}${time %B} ${time %e}${font}${voffset -10}

#Banshee info
${exec banshee – -query-artist – -query-album – -query-title – -query-track-number}

NOTE: WordPress shows an error in the above Banshee line. It should be – – (without the space between the the two – -lines.)

NOTE: If you change the color green to red (for example) then Conky will appear with a red texts in it.

#Time info
${color red} ${font :size=40}$alignc${time %H:%Mh}

When you are done safe the .conkyrc file and close it.

Starting Banshee automatically upon system startup: Fluxbox as an example

It might be useful to startup Banshee automatically in a minimized mode when you are entering your system so you do not have to fire it up manually each time.

In Fluxbox put this line on a startup file found at .fluxbox (hidden file inside your home directory)

banshee – -hide &

NOTE: WordPress shows an error in the above Banshee line. It should be – – (without the space between the the two – -lines.)

In case your system starts too fast you might need to give Conky some time start in order to avoid errors and mistakes caused by too fast startup:

(sleep 6 && banshee – -hide) &

NOTE: WordPress shows an error in the above Banshee line. It should be – – (without the space between the the two – -lines.)

NOTE: In the above 6 is the number of seconds. Adjust the seconds variable to fit your needs.

OVERALL NOTE: You can by all means use what ever desktop you want with Conky and things will probably work ok with the config presented in this post.

Here is a screenshot of Conky running on my Fluxbox desktop ( see the upper right corner with green text entries)