Help with Conky
 

Hello,

I just downloaded and extracted Conky. How do I install it? Sorry, but being a newbie and all, I am used to executables. Please release me from my windoze mental prison!!!!!

what do you see in there ... in the extracted directory ? Do you see a 'README' or 'INSTALL' ? If so, read them, if not, do you see 'configure' or 'Makefile' ? If so, might wanna try running the following in a terminal (konsole or rxvt or xterm) in the same directory:

then I guess just run 'conky'

P.S. I agree windoze is definitely a mental prison ... and there are so many more such prisons ... makes me sad :(

What I see
 

In the folder there are several text files. But I am not sure how to use these. Copy and paste or use some sort of program to open them? Before I installed slackware, I used Edubuntu which used package manager. Since I prefer a challenge, I installed Slackware and here I am looking extremely noobish..

yes, use a text editor such as vim (even tho I hate vim, it comes pre-installed)...

Are you using KDE ? If so, you can try kedit.

Well, alright, it looked interesting, so I went and compiled it myself. I was right, just run

./configure
make
su
<Enter root password>
make install

Now that I see it ... I think newer versions of DSL use this ... I never knew what it was until now ...

what kind of files?
the basic utilities for slackware are: installpkg and removepkg. there are some others - many are listed in this forum, so you can search for them. I have experience only with the above and something called slackbuilds and checkinstall, though there are some pretty cool newer ones for managing packages from source.

if you're just looking to get it up and running quickly for now...

check here conky@slackbuilds there may also be one at linuxpackages.net but I'm not that energetic.

the slackbuild script will make you a .tgz from the conky source. so - the easy way:

1. d/l and extract the slackbuild for conky
2. then move conky<whatever>.bz2 to the dir created by extracting the slackbuild.

that is the basic way to use a slackbuild. there is more info at the slackbuild site - you should read it. btw- I'd recommend putting your slackbuilds someplace you'll remember (I use /usr/local/src , but there may be better places).

welcome to slack.

I think were getting there
 

OK I did the following and got back to the# prompt

cd /<folder where conky.slackbuild is>
su
root pw

#chmod +x conky.Slackbuild
#sh conky.Slackbuild
#mv /tmp/conky*.tgz ./conky-<something>.tgz
#installpkg conky*.tgz

_______________

Now what?

ok, couple things.. the <something> i didn't mean to be taken literally. <> is often used for 'put your information here'. I merely meant put something like:

conky-1.2-3-SOBuild.tgz (or whatever the version # is)

nevertheless, check to make sure it is installed:then i assume you'll have to be in X and then from a console window try and type 'conky'

I have never used conky before, but it seems to work OK according to H_TexMex_H (a very trustworthy and knowledgeable source :D ). You'll likely have to do some reading or find somebody else's configuration that you like (for conky) to make it suit your needs. I seem to remember its configuration is strictly script based??

Next...
 

Ok I did everything as instructed and here's what happened. I ran the grep as instructed and it just kicked me back to the $ prompt. Back to the drawing board for me. Thanks for the help but I fear that I'll be searching the interweb plenty. :study:

first off i like conky - its simple
if you dont have a file called .conkyrc in your home than conky uses a default configuration out of the binary.
if you take a look at http://conky.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html you see shots and links to .conkyrc files - grap a simple one and modify it.

by the way if you did
than you have conky installed, but not as a package, so
would give you nothing.

slackbuilds are cool, but maybe a bit much for conky (?)
i would say in order to get a conkypackage for slackware (what is good because you simply can remove a pkg with removepkg <pkgname>) you do it by hand - its good practice.

because by default ./configure does this (do ./configure --help |more)
[...]
--enable-audacious enable audacious player support [default=no]
--enable-bmpx enable if you want BMPx support [default=no]
--enable-hddtemp enable if you want hddtemp support [default=yes]
--enable-mpd enable if you want MPD support [default=yes]
--enable-xmms2 enable if you want XMMS2 support [default=no]
[...]
so if you want xmms2 support you have to do
and than you do
than you become root and do
you have to adjust the filenames to whatever version of conky you compile etc.

if you use some strange xwm like kde or gnome, i think you have to put a line like
into your .conkyrc ...

Just get the package from here:
http://conky.sourceforge.net/

and compile it as I said above ... I'm not sure it can get any easier than that.

well it seems the installpkg did not work. possibly because of the funky *<something>* name. what output did you get for installpkg conky*.tgz ??

that is all cool, i did not even know about makepkg. I will try that out sometime..

me either, it just seemed Smitty67 was a bit lost so I tried to provide an alternative.

Thanks for all the help!!!
 

Thank you all soooo much. I finally got it insalled st 3:00AM EST :o Now I can start learning how to configure conkyrc. Thank you all again, i'm sure I'll get the hang of this strange old way of installing programs. Thanks again!!

conky 1.7.1.1
 

I'm trying to install conky-1.7.1.1 on Slackware-current Running KDE 4.2.2 Kernel 2.6.29.2-smp

when I try to compile it with ./configure I get a pkg-config is required error. But pkg.config is installed. I have searched the net far too long and have not found anything to help me. Everything says that I need to install pkg-config. And IT IS INSTALLED AND WORKING! Conky is just not figuring it out. Is it a bug? Is it looking somewhere else and not realizing it's error? I am totally lost here. Hope someone can help.

You should post the exact error as it appears on the terminal.