Transparent Conky in KDE

For the benefit of any Googlers who are looking for how to do this, and for my own benefit when I forget:

Trying to get Conky to be transparent in KDE would either cause all my icons to disappear, the entire background to turn black, or Conky itself to appear entirely black. "own_window" and "own_window_transparent" and "own_window_type" in any combination didn't matter.

The answer is to go to Control Center -> Desktop -> Behavior and check "Show icons on desktop" and "Allow programs in desktop window". I was struggling for two days trying to figure this out.

EDIT: Strangely, I sometimes have to enable / disable this option in KDE, and then restart Conky, and THEN Conky will be properly transparent. Odd.

Posted into Linux on Aug 05, 2006
Tags: KDEConkyLinux

3 Comments

http://gravatar.com/avatar/620c616b482e8ff76b341c60ef7f808a.jpg?d=identicon
dR0PS says:

thanks for pointing that out ! was looking for the problem some time now just thought it's a problem between beryl,conky combined with beta nvidia-drivers.

but doh! it's kde!

Jan 27, 2007 09:16 AM PST
http://gravatar.com/avatar/4d84ec3981443dfd9c287e845b60d2ce.jpg?d=identicon
Brian says:

You're welcome. See also my continuation of why this works.

Jan 28, 2007 11:15 AM PST
http://gravatar.com/avatar/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e.jpg?d=identicon
Joe Linux says:

Here's a script the restarts conky and refreshes the desktop

# Filename:      conkytoggle.sh
# Purpose:       toggle conky on/off from menu
# Authors:       Kerry and anticapitalista for antiX
# Latest change: Sun April 13, 2008.
#######################################################

#!/bin/sh

if pidof conky | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
then
 killall conky

 touch ~/Desktop/u.txt; rm ~/Desktop/u.txt

else
 conky
fi
Mar 07, 2009 01:08 PM PST

Speak Your Mind

This says COWS.

Preview

Commenting Help

Email / Avatar

  • Supply your email address and your Gravatar will be used.
  • I will never email you and your address won't be published.

No HTML allowed!

All HTML is auto-escaped. Use Markdown. Examples:

  • *emphasis* = emphasis
  • **strong** = strong
  • [link](http://foo.bar) = <a href="http://foo.bar">link</a>
  • `code in backticks` = code in backticks
  •     code indented 4 spaces = 
    code indented four spaces
  • > Angle-brace quoted text =
    Angle-brace quoted text