OMG! Conky!
Conky is getting some good press this week over on OMG! Ubuntu! Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed this post showcasing a new easy-to-use Conky theme, which was designed especially for the new-look Ubuntu 10.04. Here's what it looks like in practice:
You can download the source from gnome-look.org, in Spanish (original) or English. Well done to Veoduendes for the great look, and thanks to stevenpearce for translating it.
The Best New Features of Conky 1.8.0
Back on March 30th, Conky 1.8.0 was officially released! For those of you using Ubuntu 10.04 alpha or beta, you will already be upgraded; for anyone else, you can grab the tarball from the Conky SourceForge site.
While 1.8.0 is primarily a maintenance release, it brings with it a few new features that many users have been after for a while! Notably:
- Conky now supports ARGB transparency, aka "Real" transparency. Until now, Conky has only supported pseudo-transparency, which came with its own quirks. Now you can have a properly see-through Conky (as long as you are running a window manager that support Xorg compositing).
- A command line "pause" flag has been added, so you no longer need a startup script. Many users create a startup script for their Conkys that introduces a delay to loading up Conky so that other processes (for instance, Compiz) can finish loading first. Now you can accomplish the same thing by starting Conky with the -p/--pause flag at startup.
- There's a new alignment type: middle_middle. Now you can have your Conky align to the centre of your screen.
- Lua Cairo bindings now support the cairo_text_extents_t structure. Not fluent in Lua/Cairo yet? Basically, the cairo_text_extents_t structure holds information about Cairo text, and is what makes it possible to manipulate text alignment, e.g. centering, etc.
These are just a taster of the new features; for a full list, have a look at the Conky Wiki. And if you have a great Conky config you'd like to share, do post it here. Don't forget that you can use the Conky Pastebin to save code snippets if you wish.
Congrats to djyoung4, Winner of the February CotM!
Well, the votes are in and tallied, and the winner of February's Conky of the Month competition ("St. Valentine's Day/Massacre") is...drum roll please...djyoung4! Well done to him and all the entrants this month.
The winning screenshot, "Conky on the Rose":
Details of the config may be found here (config to be uploaded shortly).
Once again, congrats to djyoung4, and I hope to see you all enter March's contest...Details to be announced soon!
Please Vote on February’s CotM Entries!
It's time to vote on the CotM again! We've got more entries this month, so choose carefully...As always, we are looking for:
Our entries this month are:
- mrpeachy, with four different configs (!):
- LG, with the following config:
Details here: [link]
- wlourf, with the following config:
"The main part for this contest is the bloody heart and the breathing heart. The rest is for fun and for experiments!"
Details here: [link]
- djyoung4, with the following config:
Details here: [link]
Voting ends at the end of next Sunday, 7th March, so get your votes in quick!
Who do you think should win February's Conky of the Month competition, "St. Valentine's Day/Massacre"?
- djyoung4 (Conky on the rose) (33%, 6 Votes)
- wlourf (bleeding heart) (28%, 5 Votes)
- LG (red multi-Conky) (22%, 4 Votes)
- mrpeachy #1 (hearts) (6%, 1 Votes)
- mrpeachy #3 (flowers w/petals) (6%, 1 Votes)
- mrpeachy #4 (shaded flowers) (6%, 1 Votes)
- mrpeachy #2 (flowers) (-1%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 18
Loading ...Fancy Living on the Edge? Try Conky in Pre-Release!
Are you a Conky junkie? Has it been too long since the last major release? (I know, it's only been a few months...) Why not consider trying the pre-release, development version of Conky? You can get the source code of the latest release candidates at Conky's SourceForge page. And best of all, you can help the Conky project by testing the new software and submitting bugs (if you can find any!).
(Please note, as with all developmental software, you should be wary of testing pre-release versions, as they are likely to be buggy and possibly incomplete!)
Currently, the latest Conky release candidate version is 1.8.0_rc2, which incorporates (amongst other things):
- Support for ARGB transparency (aka "real" transparency, as opposed to "pseudo" transparency)
- Lua/Cairo support for the Cairo text extents structure, allowing advanced text manipulation in Lua/Cairo
The following screenshots were created with 1.8.0_rc2, using Lua/Cairo to draw the widgets:
Want to have a go with the latest developmental version? Let us know how you get on!
February’s CotM Competition: St. Valentine’s Day/Massacre
If anyone can believe it, it's February already! You know, the month that brings us Groundhog Day (what does that silly groundhog know, anyway?), Valentine's Day and well, okay, that's about it. Oh, and it brings snow, in most places in the Northern Hemisphere.
But huzzah! February also brings with it the February Conky of the Month Competition! I thought long and hard about this one, didn't want to give in to the obvious cliche, but in the end, it just had to be...St. Valentine's Day!!! And then I reconsidered, for fear of boxing in all of y'all's creativity, so we'll go with: ST. VALENTINE'S DAY/MASSACRE. So it has to be about Valentine's Day, whether you love it, or hate it! As per usual, you can use any tips & tricks you want, including external scripts and whatever else you can think of, but please pay particular attention to:
The closing date for this month's competition is the end of the month, and the winner will be announced Mid-March.
To submit your Conky for consideration, please write a comment on this post, linking to a screenshot, preferably with details (.conkyrc and/or any scripts you've used). I would recommend that you either write a post on your own blog and link to that, or post on a forum and link to that (so that we can get your picture and details all at once). Alternately, you may wish to link to an image-hosting website like Picasa, Flickr or Imageshack (for your image) and post a separate link to something like pastebin for your configs. There is a private Conky pastebin available at conky.pastebin.com if you so desire.
Finally, a couple of wallpapers to help you get inspired:
Congratulations, wlourf, Winner of January’s CotM Competition!
This month marked the first time we made the CotM (Conky of the Month) competition open to public vote, and I'm glad we did! Conkyist wlourf won this month's contest by a resounding 21 votes to 5, with his "wheel calendar" config:
wlourf posts more information about his script here and more screenshots here, and you can download his Conky config and scripts in .zip format calendar_wheel_1.2a.
wlourf has been a French Ubuntu user for the past three years and has recently jumped the Gnome ship for Openbox, which was when he first got interested in Conky. He writes a blog of his Conky scripts, and also maintains a gallery on DeviantArt.
Congrats again, wlourf, and as for the rest of you: I hope to see your entries to February's competition!
Please VOTE on the Winner of January’s CotM Competition!
Thanks to mobilediesel and wlourf for entering January's Conky of the Month (CotM)!
This month we have a new feature: a public poll, so everyone can vote on who they think deserves to win. Remember, we are looking for three things:
- Visual composition
- Conky innovation
- Adherence to theme
...or maybe just which one you think is the coolest. The poll will be closed at the end of the month, and I'll announce the winner and next month's competition on the 1st of February.
Our two entries this month are:
- mobilediesel, with the "remind" calendar:
"I guess I’ll go ahead and enter this thing. links to screenshots and scripts:[link]
and link to how I set up remind to work with my calendar: [link]
Current screenshot is here: [link]" - wlourf, with the "wheel calendar":
"Hello,
I enter this context too ! I’m beginner with Lua scripts but I like the results we can obtain.
So, my calendar script is located here : [link]
and some screenshots here : [link]"
Please vote for your favourite:
Who do you think should win the January CotM competition, "Calendars"?
- wlourf ("wheel calendar") (81%, 21 Votes)
- mobilediesel (the "remind" calendar) (19%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 26
Loading ...Congratulations, dmillerct, Winner of December’s CotM Competition!
Happy New Year, all!
I can finally announce that the winner of December 2009's Conky of the Month competition is...
(Drum roll, please!)
...dmillerct!
dmillerct won points for his simple and effective configuration, for using the Conky Rings to create colourful pie charts, and for excellent adherence to the "Winter Holidays" theme! Honourable mention goes to arzali, who only just missed out on the top spot.
The winning conky file is located here; the .zip file contains his .conkyrc, rings.lua file and a screenshot for your reference.
A short bio about the author: "I am a 31 year old IT professional. I was born in the US but I hold dual citizenship with the other being of Croatia. I go back there often as possible and plan to retire there. I currently live in southern Connecticut. I am not married but might as well be, I have an incredible girlfriend of 6 years and two cats (one of them is quite fat, like 15kilos fat). My hobbies include Conky and racing sailboats in long island sound. I also like farming, gardening and drinking copious amounts of alcohol with my mates."
He also notes: "I am running this on an EeePC so my resolution is only 1024x600."
Congratulations, dmillerct, and for the rest of you: don't forget to enter January's CotM Competition, Calendars!
The Lines are Now Closed!
Well, that's it! The closing date has passed for the very first Conky of the Month competition!
Thanks to everyone who entered, and the winner will be announced shortly.
In the meantime, I am pleased to announce the theme for next month's competition: CALENDARS! As it's a new year, I'd like to see everyone's take on a Conky calendar. (Thanks to Bruce, editor at Conky Hardcore!, for the suggestion.) The closing date, again, will be the 15th of January. Selection criteria are as in the original CotM post.
Get Conkying!