I’m trying to change to color of the system monitor outputs (and short cuts) displayed on the desktop to make them more visible over certain wallpapers. At the moment it feels like going down a rabbit hole to be honest. Is there some kind of script to make Conky more user-friendly for customization or an alternative to Conky that you can recommend?
Great resource link here:
http://conky.sourceforge.net/docs.html
Find the configuration variable you want to customize and see what the options are. Good luck!
Conky was confusing to me in the beginning as well. I figured out the way it works eventually, although I don’t use it any more.
Conky themes are described using text files, which IIRC resides in ~/.conky (I think).
Look in there, play around with that. It’s how I figured it out.
Thanks a lot, both of you! 
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If you are not careful conky can become a hobby. Enjoy your rabbit hole.
You mean obsession…
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update killed my conky after spending a ton of time on it. Now it wont run at all. I just gave up on it.
Always have a .conky backup. I have a .conky.bak which is a copy of .conky that works.
I’ve got a couple of conky themes.
One for a clock, always on top (though not if you’re using Floating windows fullscreen)
Summary
conky.config = {
– Conky settings
background = true,
update_interval = 1,
double_buffer = true,
no_buffers = true,
imlib_cache_size = 10,
– Sampling
diskio_avg_samples = 2,
cpu_avg_samples = 2,
– Window specifications
gap_x = 20,
gap_y = 30,
minimum_width = 0, minimum_height = 0,
alignment = ‘top_right’,
own_window = true,
own_window_type = ‘dock’,
own_window_transparent = true,
own_window_argb_visual = true,
own_window_argb_value = 70,
own_window_hints = ‘above, undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager’,
own_window_class = ‘conky’,
border_inner_margin = 0,
border_outer_margin = 0,
graphics = 'settings',
draw_shades = false,
default_shade_color = '#484848',
draw_outline = true,
default_outline_color = '#333',
draw_borders = false,
draw_graph_borders = false,
default_graph_width = 40, default_graph_height = 80,
show_graph_scale = true,
show_graph_range = false,
text = 'settings',
use_xft = true,
xftalpha = 0.5,
font = 'Droid Sans:size=10',
text_buffer_size = 256,
override_utf8_locale = true,
useful = 'shortenings',
short_units = true,
pad_percents = 2,
top_name_width = 30,
color = 'scheme',
default_color = '#FFFFFF',
color1 = '#FFFFFF',
color2 = '#2dcba5',-- teal
color3 = '#bbb',-- Grey
color4 = '#ebdbb2',--Gruv
color5 = '#89cf8c',
color6 = '#dddddd',
color7 = '#aaaaaa',
color8 = '#A9CFF4',--Nord
};
conky.text = [[
${alignc}${color4}${font arial rounded mt bold:size=32}${time %H:%M}]];
Always visible, mostly light, but has outline, so it’s visible on a bright background too.
The next one is a little different - light background.
Play with argb value to adjust transparency.
Summary
conky.config = {
background = true,
double_buffer = true,
no_buffers = true,
update_interval = 2,
imlib_cache_size = 10,
border_width = 1,
cpu_avg_samples = 2,
net_avg_samples = 2,
out_to_console = false,
out_to_ncurses = false,
out_to_stderr = false,
out_to_x = true,
– Window specifications #
alignment = ‘bottom_right’,
gap_x = 5,
gap_y = 40,
minimum_width = 200, minimum_height = 0,
maximum_width = 300,
own_window = true,
own_window_type = ‘dock’,
own_window_transparent = false,
own_window_argb_visual = true,
own_window_argb_value = 200,
own_window_hints = ‘undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager’,
uppercase = false,
use_spacer = ‘none’,
use_xft = true,
– Graphics settings #
draw_shades = false,
default_shade_color = ‘#ffff00’,
draw_outline = false,
draw_borders = true,
draw_graph_borders = true,
default_graph_width = 40, default_graph_height = 80,
show_graph_scale = false,
show_graph_range = false,
– Text settings #
use_xft = true,
xftalpha = 0,
font = ‘comfortaa :size=9’,
text_buffer_size = 256,
override_utf8_locale = true,
– Useful shortenings #
short_units = true,
pad_percents = 2,
top_name_width = 30,
– Color scheme #
own_window_colour = ‘#e0d9bf’,
default_color = ‘#555555’,
color1 = ‘#366e43’, --darker green
total_run_times = 100,
}
conky.text = [[${font :size=9}$color1${execi 5000 cat /etc/lsb-release}
COLORS
${color #555} 555555
${color #000} 000000
$nodename - $kernel $color $alignr Uptime:$color1 $uptime $color
${execi 5000 plasmashell --version && qmake-qt5 --version}
Load:$color1 $loadavg $color $alignr Frequency (in GHz):$color1 $freq_g $color
Processes:$color1 $processes $color Running:$color1 $running_processes $color $alignr Swap Use:$color1 $swap/$swapmax $color
${font :size=8}$color
${execi 5000 df -h --total /mnt/*}
${alignc }Snapshot:$color1 ${execi 250 ls -r -l /mnt/T3/timeshift/snapshots | sed -n ‘2p’| cut -c 29-40}
]]