The desktop customization ecosystem is rife with cool utilities capable of transforming dull setups into slick environments. Rainmeter is one such tool, though its Windows-only restriction may sound like a downer if you prefer Linux distributions. That’s where Conky steps in with its powerful customization options, and here’s everything you need to know to integrate this neat tool into your setup.

What’s Conky, anyway?

And what’s so special about it?

Leaving the weird name aside for a minute, Conky is an ultra-lightweight system monitoring application designed to help you check your PC’s statistics in real time – on paper, that is. With the right collection of widgets, you can turn Conky into a robust customization application that can go toe-to-toe with Rainmeter.

For instance, you can pair Conky with gorgeous themes to create an aesthetically pleasing Linux desktop that includes all your essential software and hardware metrics. Since the CLI-heavy nature of Conky can be rather troublesome when you're just starting out, you can use Conky Manager to make things a little easier on your part.

Installing Conky and Conky Manager

Although the normal version of Conky works out-of-the-box with most distributions, you might have some issues setting up Conky Manager using the official repositories on the latest version of Debian, Ubuntu, and other distributions. As such, you’ll have to go the extra mile and compile the app manually. To do so,

1. Launch the terminal app included in your Linux distro.
2. Assuming you’re using a Debian-based distribution, use the apt repository to install Conky.

   sudo apt install conky -y

3. Download the necessary packages to compile Conky manager with this command:

   sudo apt install build-essential git valac libgee-0.8-dev libgtk-3-dev rsync libjson-glib-dev gettext libgettextpo-dev p7zip-full imagemagick -y

4. Grab the Conky Manager files using git clone before switching to the downloaded folder with the cd command:

   git clone https://github.com/zcot/conky-manager2.git
   cd conky-manager2

5. Run the build and make build commands to compile Conky Manager:

   make
   sudo make install

Configuring Conky Manager

While Conky Manager has a fairly intuitive interface, here are some quick pointers to help you master the app.

• After launching Conky Manager, you’ll be greeted by lots of widgets, which you can enable by checking the toggle next to them.
• You can modify the size, transparency, positioning, and other characteristics of the widgets by tapping the Edit widget button.
• If the default set of widgets seems underwhelming, you can download some new ones and add them to Conky by tapping the Import Theme Pack button.
• Once you’ve prepared the ideal set of widgets and wallpaper for your desktop, you can save it by switching to the Themes tab and hitting Save Theme.

Design the perfect Linux desktop with Conky

With that, you’re free to customize your desktop to your heart’s content. Personally, I prefer pairing Conky with a tiling manager like i3. For the taskbar, you can use the Plank utility to fine-tune its appearance to your liking. If you love animated wallpapers on your desktop, I recommend adding Paperview to your repertoire of aesthetic utilities.