How to get conky to stay on the desktop

Question

I have a conky setup that I've used on a number of desktops (here's the conkyrc). It works fine in Ubuntu Unity, XFCE, Gnome and Openbox, but not Lubuntu (LXDE). The problem is that I cannot get it to stay on the Lubuntu LXDE desktop reliably. Either the conky window disappears if I click the desktop or if I minimize all windows (show desktop).

I've tried all variations in the configuration file for "own_window", "own_window_colour", "own_window_transparent" and "own_window_type" and have Googled quite a bit to resolve this. If it edit the conkyrc file and set the own_window_type to "normal", conky disappears if I minimize all windows. If I set it to "desktop" it disappears if I click anywhere on the desktop. If I use "override" it doesn't display at all. And the other options don't work well for obvious reasons.

On another Ubuntu Unity install I had a similar problem, but got around it by using Compiz Config Settings Manager to ignore my conky window. On my netbook Lubuntu install I don't have compiz installed.

How can I get conky to stay on my desktop.

Answer 1

Seems like setting window type to desktop is not enough sometimes.

Try:

own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager

Got it from here.

Works for me in XFCE. I'm guessing it'll be fine for lxde/openbox as well.

Answer 2

You could try to add a script that executes on startup.

For example:

#!/bin/bash
conky ;

(don't forget to chmod +x it ;)

Answer 3

This config works, on Gnome and Cinnamon and is the way to do it.

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type dock
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_argb_value 100
gap_x 940
gap_y 20

The last 2 attributes absolutely position it on screen and need to be changed for your configuration. A working complete configuration file can be found here on Github.

Answer 4

My solution to this problem is add these two lines in your bash script

conky -c /home/ajay/.conkycolors/conkyrc >/dev/null 2>&1 &
conky -c /home/ajay/.conkycolors/conkyrc >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Answer 5

The above did not work for me. What did work was to set the "own_window_type" to "normal" in /etc/conky/conky.conf.

own_window_type normal

As per this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039399