Desktop customization and conky configuration oh my !
 

I've just recently installed #! Linux on my elderly desktop and I love it. Now I feel that need that many of us have to make it my own. I've looked over many custom desktops and conky configs for something to inspure me, I started this thread to ask some questions of those of you who have gone before and have any idea of what limits there may or may not be in what I am able to do.

Right now I've got two or three idea's kicking around in my head, however they are limited by what conky can do. So far all the configs I've seen are very technolgy themed (For obvious reasons) They look like something out of tron or any other various sci-fi setting. I'm wondering if it would be possible to do something a little more fantasy based.

My idea is to have conky display cpu and ram etc in vials on an alchemy rack. So low CPU usage would look like a nearly empty vial with blue liquid for example and at 100% it would appear to be a vial over flowing with blue liquid, Ram in red with a orange vial next to it with swap usage, down the way we've got a green vial next to a purple vial that show network up and down and some where in the mix maybe a pice of parchment with the top 5 or 10 processes based on cpu usage in a font that looks like hand writing like the scroll is magically updating itself.

My thoughts are that I might have to combine the conky config with a cleverly designed desktop wallpaper to pull this off. Anyone have any examples of something like this being done before or does this sound just too far fetched to be done?

My other idea involves getting a good screen shot of a starship bridge and then putting the output from conky onto the screens (For example one of the Enterprise bridge, have CPU on Data's console and Ram the other with weather data displayed on the main screen, just as an example of what I'm thinking of.

Any comments are welcome, even if they are mean ^_^

<Edit> This is the best place I could think to put this since it pertains to desktop settings etc, if it should be some place else let me know, sorry! <Edit>

http://conky.pitstop.free.fr/wiki/in...itle=Main_Page

search for posts by sector11 at http://crunchbang.org/forums ;)

Oh My Indeed!

Much thanks. Can't access foreign sites from work but will check it out when I'm at home and look for posts by sector11 now :)

Incase anyone else comes along and sees this thread and is interested in the same thing. I've found this thread to be very inspiring around what can be done with conky. On the first few pages alone they've got custom designed sci-fi themed conky configs that let you spin a wheel of icons for a launcher, it is pretty amazing. I feel like if they can do this I should be able to do what I have in mind. (though to be honest after seeing some of these screen shots I might go with a more sci-fi theme)
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18419

Also there is this thread tha has a major amount of info about conky in general
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=16909

I was going to use this "someday".

Holy wow Habitual ! That is better than I could have asked for. Would be awesome to clear each of those little monitors out and have them running conky shrunk down, and then when you mouse over them they blow up to show the screen in more detail (From what I've been reading in that interactive conky thread that should be possible) Would also be neat if you could take that top left screen and put a termianl in it that actually works when you click on it (Blows up to a useable size) then you can min it back down. I figure you could put a weather report direclty on the glass and have it be small but if you click on it , it gives you a 3 day forcast or whatever across the entire window.

This screen really reminds me of The old Battlecruiser 3000 AD Game (The first one had a similiar HUD, the follow ups didn't have the bridge sadly) Would be really awesome if you could have your second or third desktop set up with similiar views almost like you're standing the center of the observation deck and you're spinning around.

Yeah, that should be do-able with gimp and one of the lasso tools in gimp. (clearing screens), however
the zoom action you describe can probably be done with LUA and I defer to Mr.Peachy on that issue.

But it is an inspiring graphic!

That is really Amazing! Habitual!

Did you create that in GIMP?

No, I did not. I am not in any way "graphically inclined". I saw it surfing for new conky BGs one day.

I wrote conky scripts exclusively for about 8 months and I came across that pic and thought it'd be great for a conky control panel I already titled "FlightDeck".

This was my "last hurrah" via conky as I was looking for another challenge.
I never followed through with it, just kept the pic.

Peace.

Ok; cool pic of a flight deck to keep around-

I'm pretty good with GIMP but not that good yet-

Peace out-

Yes I'm going to read Mr. Peachy's thread in detail and try to at least pick up what info I need to learn to make this work : ) I've really been meaning to learn how to program so I can teach my children at a young age at least the basics of it (We're home schooling them and if I don't teach them they're going to have to learn it all themselves) At any rate might as well learn LUA too. I'm sure the basics can apply to both (So far I've managed to code an extremely crude Python RPG that randomly generates monsters for you to fight, randomly names them, and keeps throwing them at you until you die. Not very much fun but I managed to make it redraw the screen and give the illusion of a UI. Then again I guess that is what a UI is )