Monitoring your system with Conky
Vital Signs

This light-weight system monitor keeps you informed about your computer's performance.
System monitoring utilities help users keep track of performance metrics, and the Linux environment offers a variety of useful monitoring utilities. One of the simplest and easiest of these monitoring tools is a desktop gem called Conky [1].
Conky's history goes back more than four years. At the time, the project was launched under the name Torsmo. After just one year, Conky forked from Torsmo. The project founders were inspired by the Canadian TV show "Trailer Park Boys" and chose one if its protagonists as the project name.
Conky not only displays CPU load and memory usage data, it also gives details on your hard disk and network traffic, evaluates the data from various sensors, integrates news feeds off the Internet, and provides information on a media player if a player happens to be active. To configure what you want the system monitor to show and how you want it shown to you is quite simple.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.