How to Monitor your Desktop PC with Conky on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Conky is a free, open source, lightweight system monitoring tool available for Linux and BSD. It is used to monitor and display information of CPU consumption, disk usage, GPU temperature, fan speed, GPU clock, RAM utilization, and network speed. Conky allows you to change the looks of the displayed information via Conky configuration file.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Conky on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Requirements

• Ubuntu 18.04 desktop installed on your system.
• A non-root user with sudo privileges.

Install Conky

By default, Conky is available in the Ubuntu 18.04 default repository. You can install it with the following command:

sudo apt-get install conky-all -y

Once the Conky has been installed, you can run the Conky using the following command:

conky

You should see the following screen.

Install Conky Manager

Conky is a text-based application, so you have to change its configuration file to change the looks of Conky. But, it is very complex for beginners. You can use Conky manager a GUI tool with Conky to configure Conky using graphical interface.

By default, Conky manager is not available in the Ubuntu 18.04 default repository. You can add the repository with the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa

Next, update the repository and install Conky Manager with the following command:

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install conky-manager -y

Once the Conky Manager is installed, you can start Conky Manager from the Unity Dash:

Now, click on the Conky Manager icon to launch the Conky Manager as shown in the following image:

Here, you can change Widgets and Themes as per your need. Now, click on the edit button. You should see the following image:

Here, you can change the alignment, transparency, size, time etc of the displayed Conky theme and its widget.

About Hitesh Jethva

Over 8 years of experience as a Linux system administrator. My skills include a depth knowledge of Redhat/Centos, Ubuntu Nginx and Apache, Mysql, Subversion, Linux, Ubuntu, web hosting, web server, Squid proxy, NFS, FTP, DNS, Samba, LDAP, OpenVPN, Haproxy, Amazon web services, WHMCS, OpenStack Cloud, Postfix Mail Server, Security etc.