Last updated on October 8th, 2021
This simple tutorial shows how to install Conky Manager, a graphical front-end for Conky system monitor, in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Conky is a light-weight system monitor for Linux Xorg, that displays CPU, GPU, and disk usage, network speed, weather, date and time and other information on desktop as widget.
And Conky Manager is a graphical tool that manages Conky config files. It provides options to start/stop, browse and edit Conky themes installed on the system.
Install Conky and Conky Manager 2 in Ubuntu 20.04:
The software was originally developed by by teejee2008 (Tony George), but not updated for a few years. And Conky Manager 2 takes the job to make it work on Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 since they are still default to X.
Besides building from the source, this Ubuntu PPA contains Conky manager packages for Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, and Conky Manager 2 for Ubuntu 20.04.
1.) Open terminal either by searching from overview screen or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When terminal opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomtomtom/conky-manager
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Then install Conky as well as Conky Manager via commands:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install conky-manager2
Start and use Conky Manager 2:
Once installed, search for and launch Conky Manager app from the activities overview screen (or from start menu depends on your DE).
When the app opens, choose a widget or theme will show the preview in the bottom. Click on the ‘triangle‘ icon will start the selected widget or theme.
Conky widget may not well displayed by default. By clicking on the ‘spanner‘ icon will open the widget settings, allows to change its position, transparent, size and more.
Users may also click on the ‘pencil‘ icon to edit widget in config file. When file opens, use own_window_type desktop to remove window header bar and border if any. And set both own_window_argb_visual yes and own_window_argb_value 0 to enable transparent background.
Uninstall Conky, Conky Manager:
For any reason, you can easily remove the Ubuntu PPA by running the command below in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:tomtomtom/conky-manager
If you want to remove Conky as well as Conky manager run command:
sudo apt remove --autoremove conky conky-manager2
Conky Looks professional does it have a debian counterpart?
Conky is available in Debian main repositories
I’m trying to install this on mint 19.3. It says unable to locate package conky-manager. How do I get this installed? I followed the directions above.
@Dan Seems it has been removed. :(
Hi, could you update your repository for 20.10 please?
What year is this? Conky is up past version 1.10, but the discontinued conky-manager doesn’t even support 1.10 configs so you can’t use any of the new functionality from Conky from the past 5 years.
This one builds on current systems directly, and is updated for Conky >1.10. it’s a fork called conky-manager2 : https://github.com/zcot/conky-manager2
that work , finally conky manager2 :v ,
Ubuntu 21.10 says:
E: The repository ‘http://ppa.launchpad.net/tomtomtom/conky-manager/ubuntu impish Release’ does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can’t be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
Now what?
Sadly the PPA supports up to Ubuntu 20.10. Ubuntu 21.10 Impish is not supported …