Uninstall Conky

I read a lot about ‘Conky’ and seen a few ‘YouTube’ videos, so I thought I give it a trial.
I open Pamac and search for ‘Conky’ install ‘Conky 1.11.6-1’ and ‘Conky Manager 2.4-4’
Started looking at the options in Conky manager, could not get it to work to my satisfaction, seem to be stuck on the ‘square green apples’ background with nothing else (none of the various system displays). Restarted the computer, but still stuck on the green apples! open the system settings, tried ‘Themes’ and ‘Background’ but the green apple background was not there?? So I thought, lets just remove it, that should fix it. Back to Pamac, selected both apps and clicked remove. Done but the green apples were still on my screen? Restarted for good measure, but the green apples are still there?!? what’s going on?
I had a look in Nemo and I found a Conky folder in my Home folder. it holds 2 files (conky-startup.sh, and .themepacks) and several folders (Conky MIUI, Conky Seamod, Gotham, fonts, TeejeeTech, and Green Apple Desktop)
I did not make a backup before (I should have), so there is nothing to restore - How can I remove all traces of ‘Conky’??

Edit: I got rid of the green apple background simply by changing the background, but all the files are still in my ‘Home’ folders

Uninstall programs don’t remove files from your home folder, you have to do it manually

A lot of the old conky stuff is now outdated. Conky still works though, and I think I prefer home grown scripts…

You decide what you want and where you want it.

When you install Teejee’s stuff, it drops some config folders in your home (press ctrl+H to toggle hidden folders).

If you decide to move forward with it, then choose or create a folder in /home and write your own.

Here’s one I use often.
Screenshot_20210202_155127

And the script looks like this

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 = 7,
	gap_y = 90,
	minimum_width = 0, minimum_height = 50,
	maximum_width = 250,
	alignment = 'top_right',
	own_window = true,
	own_window_type = 'dock',
	own_window_transparent = false,
	own_window_argb_visual = true,
	own_window_argb_value = 80,
	own_window_hints = 'undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
	border_inner_margin = 0,
	border_outer_margin = 0,
	graphics = 'settings',

	draw_shades = false,
	default_shade_color = '#484848',
	draw_outline = false,
	default_outline_color = '#dddddd',
	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,
	font = 'Droid Sans:size=9',
	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 = '#16a085',-- teal2
	color4 = '#FFFFFF',
	color5 = '#DCDCDC',
--DCDCDC
	color6 = '#FFFFFF',
	color7 = '#FFFFFF',
	color8 = '#A9CFF4',
--A9CFF4

-- iphone wlp0s20u12

};
conky.text = [[${if_existing /proc/net/route enp2s0} ${upspeedgraph enp2s0 30,50 efa644 ff5b00 3500 -l} ${downspeedgraph enp2s0 30,50 337225 33dd16 10000 -l}${color }${font }
${upspeed enp2s0} ${goto 50} ${downspeed enp2s0}${endif} ${if_existing /proc/net/route wlp0s20u12}WiFi${upspeedgraph wlp0s20u12 50,125 cfcd8f d0865f 3500 -l} ${alignr}${downspeedgraph wlp0s20u12 50,125 88a669 55ff1a 10000 -l}
${color } Up: ${upspeed wlp0s20u12} Σ=${totalup wlp0s20u12}${alignr}Dn: ${color8}${downspeed wlp0s20u12} Σ=${totaldown wlp0s20u12}${endif} ${if_existing /proc/net/route wlp0s20u11} ${upspeedgraph wlp0s20u11 50,125 efa644 ff5b00 3500 -l} ${alignr}${downspeedgraph wlp0s20u11 50,125 88a669 55ff1a 10000 -l}
${color }Up: ${upspeed wlp0s20u11} Σ=${totalup wlp0s20u11}${alignr}Dn: ${color8}${downspeed wlp0s20u11} Σ=${totaldown wlp0s20u11}${endif}
${if_match ${memperc}<=50}${color green}${if_match ${memperc}>=50}${color lightgreen}${if_match ${memperc}>=75}${color yellow}${endif}${font :size=8}RAM:${membar 5,70}${color }
${if_match ${cpu}>=40}${color lightsalmon}${endif}${if_match ${cpu}>=75}${color red}${endif}CPU:${cpubar 5,70}
]];

I keep the file in a folder /home/ben/Admin
I launch it with a script which launches all my conky scripts:

#!/bin/bash
 if pgrep -x "conky"
    then killall conky
    else 
        conky -d -c ~/Dropbox/Admin/conky/c1-network.conky
        conky -d -c ~/Dropbox/Admin/conky/c2.conky
        conky -d -c ~/Dropbox/Admin/conky/c3.conky

fi

In conky c2 I have processes and memory hogs and stuff, in c3 general information and any notes I need reminding about.

I added lines to c2 (total_run_times = 5000,) and c3 ( total_run_times = 1000,) so that they time out and vanish without interaction. If I repeat my ‘conky’ shortcut (actually a mouse gesture) it kills all conkies - or it launches them all.

So be patient, give it another go :wink:

conky manager - doesn’t work with the new conky format - and what you have found is incomplete - it often requires a theme which can be found on one of the popular theme sites.

If I recall correct there is a refactored version of conky manager in AUR (conky-manager2-git) which accomodates for those changes.

What the conky-manager does is to create a wrapper around several conky script and thereby create a socalled theme. This was very popular years ago with window managers.

To get some working conkies - take a look at one of the conky threads on the forum.

Openbox and i3 and probably others utilize conky in some way.

This is an example from the Openbox thread

2 Likes

I did not know that! I thought only Windows leaves remnants behind? I thought Linux is better than that.
So it is safe to simply delete the Home/Username/Conky folder and all it’s content? Did Conky place files elsewhere on my system? Do I need to look for them and remove them?
By the way, I’m using Manjaro-Cinnamon if that make a difference and the computer is an oldish Thinkpad x220t.

Really? Would you really want the package manager to remove all your documents when you uninstall libreoffice? :laughing: - I would like to see your face when that happens - of course it never will - but nonetheless.

Windows does not remove your user files when you uninstall a program.

In fact Arch Linux has the best package manager of all Linux distributions. Sometimes a developer thinks that pacman can be better - then they create a GUI or something that mimics the behavour of pacman - but there can be only one - and there is only one - pacman!

When you uninstall an application - only user files and local system configurations modified by a user is left on the system.

The reason being - package manager never touches files in user’s home - and locally modified system files should not be removed - unless specifically requested by the user.

This is why several switches controlling the pacman -R command is available. Just check the difference between

# pacman -R
# pacman -Rnsu

You will come to appreciate these differences - not now perhaps - but over time.

2 Likes

There’s some confusion here - with Windows, an installation can leave instructions to reinstall itself, registry entries (surely Registry is the most loved aspect of Windows) and make things very tightly integrated. Certainly with XP and Vista I had nightmares about this.

Software (like Mozilla) will deposit ‘user’ files and folders in your /home. They aren’t ‘installed’ yet they will be used if you reinstall later. To detect errors, sometimes renaming .config folders is enough (.mozillaBAK for example).

To get more help with using pacman, go to your terminal and type pacman -h
it gives you clues…
Try pacman -h -R and see further down the rabbithole.

It’s good to remember things, but sometimes an ‘alias’ is more friendly. If you ever forget an alias, like 'what does install do?then typealias install`. We’re encouraged to use pamac, we have pacman too, but I often mistype…

My config .zshrc (it’ll work in .bashrc for a bash terminal) has:

alias purge='pacman -Rnsuv'
alias install='pamac install'

I think the last v was added for verbosity, I forget now :stuck_out_tongue:

The main issues we have installing/removing stuff is with ‘variations on standard behaviour’ - for example, we have a .config folder (which is kind of ‘new’) yet .mozilla still skips that and goes straight to ~/.mozilla and then what’s this other ~/.local folder for? Weird stuff makes no sense to me :rofl:
/usr/share is for installed stuff - some themes there but also there’s some plasma stuff in .local too… so add them to your bookmarks, edit and label them…

With Dolphin, it pays to add bookmarks for config folders…
/home/ben/.local/share/plasma
/usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/
/var/lib/plex/Plex Media Server

Over time it seems more logical. Remember, Windows only ever seems easier to people who used Windows for 50,000 hours and Linux for 500 hours. That’s a little simplistic, but some things take time to sink in.

<RANT
Hmmm yes, today my wife asked me ‘Where has My Computer gone??? Why you hide it?’ and I suddenly realised I had no idea how to answer that question without searching…

(answer - in Windows 10 it’s renamed ‘This PC’ which makes no more sense than the old name; and of course, it’s perfectly visible if you press Meta+E - but she can’t cope unless it has an ICON on the DESKTOP to CLICK).

No I would not be happy and No I would not expected my document to be deleted if I uninstall Libreoffice. But even if that did happen, I would not have loss my documents, because I don’t actually use /Home/username/ to store my documents. When I install a distro, I always create a separate partition ‘Data’ formated as NTFS (on a separate HDD if more than one is available) so I can access the files in there from Windows and/or Linux and if I need to upgrade or change distros, all my documents are safe.

But I digress, back to ‘Conky’
I am a ‘newby’ and I thought that Conky is a systems app that will give me a GUI look at my hardware specs (cpu use, memory use, cpu temp, etc…) I did not create any documents/files (as I would with Libreoffice) so I would not expect to find ‘user’ files in /home. I only started looking for remnants after I uninstalled it and the desktop change it made (square green apples) were still there and I assumed it did not uninstall properly.

I did that and learned what they do, thanks. I run -Rnsuv for ‘conky’ and ‘conky-manager’ and in both cases it returned ‘error: target not found:’ so looks like it had been removed from the root partition when I uninstalled the app using Pamac.
To remove the folder in the /home partition, do I just delete it in ‘Nemo’? or is there a pacman command i should use?

Yes … use Nemo or whatever tool you like.
Set it to show hidden files/directories.
(those starting with a dot)
You are looking for a directory:
~/.config/conky
full path:
/home/$username/.config/conky

no, you can’t use pacman
as has been said:
it will never touch anything inside your /home directory

There was no ‘Conky’ folder at ~/.config but there was a ‘Conky’ folder at /home/ I removed it with all it’s content. No more ‘Conky’ on my system. Thanks for your help

:+1:

just FYI:
~/.config
is the very same as
/home/$username/.config
~/.config
IS: your home .config
:sunglasses:

1 Like

Lolz yes.
~ is YOUR home, it is /home/ben for me.
/home is a container for username folders.
If you navigate to /home you will see root plus folders for other users (in mine I have ben and test).

It’s good to remember, because then you can compare a fresh test home folder with your own, similarly you can browse a timeshift folder and compare the home folders in that with your own.

Good to know that ~/ is a shortcut for /home/my username/ but what I was trying to say in my last post was that there was no file or directory called ‘Conky’ in /home/my username/.config
But I did however find a directory ‘Conky’ in /home/my username/

cheers

I think more recent conky installations tend to create the conky configuration folder straight in the hone directory, but you can also move it to .config if you prefer that.