How to Install and Configure Conky in Arch Linux

Conky is a system monitor for X Windows. It will show you all sorts of useful information like temperature, CPU, Memory, disk space, and more. This is all displayed on your screen in a neat, widget like interface. This is a really popular tool that people like not just because it is functional but because it looks pretty.

You can install conky on Arch Linux with this command:

sudo pacman -S conky

You can use this to generate an example configuration:

conky --print-config

Create your config directory like this:

mkdir -p ~/.config/conky

Create an initial, default configuration like this:

conky --print-config > ~/.config/conky/conky.conf

You can set one of these two values so that Conky will not be minimized when you hit the “show desktop” button. Compiz actually has an option for this so if you use that you won’t necessarily need these.

own_window_type = 'override',
own_window_type = 'desktop',

You can enable double buffering to prevent flickering like this ( you will also need DBE support for Xorg ):

Add these lines to your config file for transparency. You will need a composite manager to be running.

~/.config/conky/conky.conf

conky.config = {
    own_window = true,
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    own_window_type = 'desktop',
 }

 

Update / add these two values to the above for Semi-transparency:

own_window_transparent = false,
own_window_argb_value = 90,

You can find far more information in the Arch Wiki Page.