Installing Conky on your Debian is pretty simple. The real deal, however, is to make the application more useful by customizing it according to your needs. This can be done through the graphical front-end, the Conky Manager, for managing Conky config files. It also provides options to start/stop, browse and edit Conky themes installed on your system.
In this article, we will explain how you can install the Conky utility and the Conky Manager application through the Debian command line.
We have run the commands and procedures mentioned in this article on a Debian 10 Buster system.
Install Conky System Monitor
Conky is a system monitor for X originally based on torsmo. Since its inception, Conky has changed significantly from its predecessor, while maintaining simplicity and configurability. Conky can display just about anything, either on your root desktop or in its own window. Not only does Conky have many built-in objects; it can also display just about any piece of information by using scripts and other external programs.
The Conky utility is easily available through the official Debian repository and can easily be installed through the command line using the apt-get command.
Open the Terminal application by pressing the Super(Windows) key and searching for Terminal through the Application Launcher as follows:
Then, log in as root by entering su and then the password for root. You are now authorized to add/remove and configure software on Debian. Now, enter the following command in order to update the local repository index with that of the Internet. This helps you in installing the latest version of a software available online.
# sudo apt-get update
Now you are ready to install Conky; you can do so by running the following command as sudo:
$ sudo apt-get install conky-all
The system might ask you the password for sudo and also provide you with a Y/n option to continue the installation. Enter Y and then hit enter; the software will be installed on your system. The process may, however, take some time depending on your Internet speed.
You can check the version number of the application, and also verify that it is indeed installed on your system, through the following command:
$ conky --version
Launch Conky
Please run the following command in your Terminal(as non root) in order to launch Conky.
$ conky
This is how the Conky interface looks like:
You will notice that the Conky window is just a plain interface that displays the system information is a hideous way, making it less informative for the user. The window even makes your desktop flicker, making it even less pleasing to the eyes.
Remove
In case you want to remove the Conky application through the command line, run the following command as root:
$ sudo apt-get remove conky-all
Enter y on the y/n prompt and the software will be completely removed from your system.
Install Conky Manager
If you did not like the almost “useless” display of Conky, you can install a more useful graphical utility, the Conky Manager. This will help you in configuring Conky and also add custom themes to it.
Installation
Open the Terminal application and run the following command in order to download the Conky Manager .run file from TeeJee2008 github.
$ wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/teejee2008/conky-manager/releases/download/v2.4/conky-manager-v2.4-amd64.run
As root, authorize yourself to run the installation file by running the following command:
# chmod +x conky-manager-v2.4-amd64.run
Then, install the Conky Manager through the following command:
# sudo ./conky-manager-v2.4-amd64.run
The process might take some time, depending on your Internet speed, after which the Conky Manager will be installed on your system.
Launch the Conky Manager
You can access the Conky Manager from the Debian application launcher bar as follows, or directly access it from the applications listing:
Alternatively, you can launch the Conky Manager through the command line by running the following command:
$ conky-manager
This is how the Conky Manager looks like:
Remove
If you installed the Conky Manager through the above method, you will be able to find a file named conky-manager-uninstall in your /bin folder.
Run the following command as root in order to uninstall the Conky Manager:
# ./conky-manager-uninstall
