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!