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I've taken the plunge and removed Win 7 from my laptop and gone whole hog Ubuntu 16.10. So far so good.

I am missing a couple things, both Win 7 provided as "gadgets". One is a CPU usage graph, the other a Wifi/Network usage graph. I know about "top" and I looked at "nethogs", neither is quite what I'm looking for.

The CPU shows a bar graph for each of the individual cpu's showing percent usage. The wifi/network one shows a line graph (and tet details) of how fast the wifi is going. This one if of particular interest right now as I'm having internet difficulties (provider problems).

Anybody have any suggestions? thanks, Larry

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2 Answers 2

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Conky

Conky is a desktop application that can show you several pieces of information, from CPU usage, to network traffic, and is completely customizable.

To install, run sudo apt-get install conky conky-all

I would suggest installing Conky Manager to make it easier to configure it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conky-manager

From here you'll have some basic templates to use, which you can further customize if you want to.

For more information on that, see the Conky Documentation.

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  • Sounds excellent, but the last line, installing the conky-manager fails with "unable to locate package"
    – LarryM
    Mar 21, 2017 at 22:12
  • Reading package lists... Done W: The repository 'ppa.launchpad.net/thomas.tsai/ubuntu-tuxboot/ubuntu yakkety Release' does not have a Release file. N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. E: Failed to fetch ppa.launchpad.net/thomas.tsai/ubuntu-tuxboot/ubuntu/dists/… 404 Not Found E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
    – LarryM
    Mar 21, 2017 at 22:34
  • Strange. I just reinstalled it fine on my laptop from the same ppa. Seems your error is from another ppa you added to install tuxboot. Open your Software and Updates application. Under "Ubuntu Software" tab, make sure there is no CD-ROM checked there, and if there is, remove it. Next, under the "Other Software" tab, find the tuxboot line and remove it. Then close the window and select "Reload". Do the last 3 lines again to install conky-manager afterwards.
    – Delorean
    Mar 21, 2017 at 23:31
  • Yes, something else failed on tuxboot. I did follow one of the links and got to the author's site and got the package there. I'll do this cleanup so nothing else goes bonkers. Thanks!
    – LarryM
    Mar 22, 2017 at 3:55
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This 30 second gif shows Conky in action. For the first 15 seconds nothing is running and for the last 15 seconds Chrome is started up and you can see the CPU's spike as the 10 chrome tabs are reloaded from the last save.

Conky Display

The relevant code is:

TEXT ${color}Today is:${color green}$alignr${time %A,}$alignr ${time %e %B %G} ${color}Distribution:${color green}$alignr ${pre_exec cat /etc/issue.net} $machine ${color}Kernel:$alignr${color green} $kernel ${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1} ${color2}${voffset 5}Intel® i-7 3630QM 3.4 GHz: ${color1}@ ${color green}${freq} MHz
${color}${goto 13}CPU 1 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu1}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu1 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 2 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu2}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu2 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 3 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu3}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu3 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 4 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu4}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu4 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 5 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu5}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu5 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 6 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu6}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu6 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 7 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu7}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu7 18} ${color}${goto 13}CPU 8 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu8}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu8 18} ${color1}All CPU ${color green}${cpu}% ${goto 131}${color1}Temp: ${color green}${hwmon 2 temp 1}°C ${goto 250}${color1}Up: ${color green}$uptime ${color green}$running_processes ${color1}running of ${color green}$processes ${color1}loaded processes. Load Avg. 1-5-15 minutes: ${alignr}${color green}${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $1}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4} ${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $2}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4} ${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $3}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4} ${color1}NVIDIA ${color}-GPU ${color green}${nvidia gpufreq} Mhz ${color}-Memory ${color green}${nvidia memfreq} Mhz ${color1}GT650M ${color}-Temp ${color green}${nvidia temp}°C ${color}-Threshold ${color green}${nvidia threshold}°C ${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1} ${color1}${voffset 5}Process Name: ${goto 215}PID ${goto 265}CPU% ${goto 337}Mem% ${color}${goto 13}${top name 1} ${goto 210}${top pid 1} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 1} ${goto 350}${top mem 1} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 2} ${goto 210}${top pid 2} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 2} ${goto 350}${top mem 2} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 3} ${goto 210}${top pid 3} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 3} ${goto 350}${top mem 3} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 4} ${goto 210}${top pid 4} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 4} ${goto 350}${top mem 4} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 5} ${goto 210}${top pid 5} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 5} ${goto 350}${top mem 5} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 6} ${goto 210}${top pid 6} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 6} ${goto 350}${top mem 6} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 7} ${goto 210}${top pid 7} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 7} ${goto 350}${top mem 7} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 8} ${goto 210}${top pid 8} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 8} ${goto 350}${top mem 8} ${color}${goto 13}${top name 9} ${goto 210}${top pid 9} ${goto 275}${color green}${top cpu 9} ${goto 350}${top mem 9} ${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1} ${color}Memory:${goto 148}${color green}$mem / $memmax $alignr${color green}${memperc /}% ${color}Linux:${goto 148}${color green}${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr${color green}${fs_used_perc /}%

Sorry for posting as "Quote" if I posted as "Code block" it would be one long line.

As far as using Conky in 16.04 / 16.10 most people have success with older version used in 14.04 as per this Q&A (Ubuntu 16.04 apt-get doesn't provide conky-all from Ubuntu 14.04)

If you want to learn more about Conky and get some cool scripts written by others here are 3,000 messages: ( Post your .conkyrc files w/ screenshots) spanning a decade and plus change.

Sorry I don't have the network speed line graph going on this display. I used to have it in the old days (2014) when I was concerned about speed as you are now. I did recently setup a tally of how much bandwidth was consumed in a month for billing purposes:

vnstat 2

Instructions for this are described in a variety of Q&A's here: (Any good application for data usage monitor?) and here: (How can you monitor internet data usage?) and here: (How to track the total network data in a month). All three answers look about the same.

Let me know if you need to see the network speed bar graph and I'll modify my Conky to show that and include the code.

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  • thank you! So is there some place that has information about these sorts of gems? Am index maybe with an ample description?
    – LarryM
    Mar 22, 2017 at 3:58
  • You're welcome. Look at the link I gave with the 3,000 posts by Conky users in Ubuntu Forums. Jump to the end of the list and work your way backwards to see lots of great examples. Mar 22, 2017 at 4:48

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