First, I start conky without config file, and it was working good - icons were on my desktop and it has transparent window. So, I had been adding lines from config, which I know it made icons hide and when I added 'double_buffer yes', icons disappeared. Unfortunately - without double buffering conky blinks on my desktop, what looks awful...

Brilliant! I had some trouble seemingly due to the fact that my wallpaper had a space in the filename, but I changed it, reset the default wallpaper, ran feh, and all is well. You have no idea how long I was looking for this solution.

Genius, you are simply genius! hehe

i found an easiest way to have conky transparent without installing / using feh on KDE :

OLDWALLPAPER=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 1 killall conky sleep 10 && conky -d dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setBackgroundEnabled false sleep 1 && dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setBackgroundEnabled true dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper "$OLDWALLPAPER" 7

Sorry to throw a spanner in the works... is there a hack for those using the 'gradient' desktop background feature i.e. wallpaper set to 'none'?

Thanks for the solution, conky drove me nuts trying to get it properly transparent.

NOTE with Beryl/Compiz:

If you're going to put the command in your .conkyrc file use $texeci instead of $exec. Personally for me on kdemod + compiz-fusion it caused some lag when using the compiz-fusion toys. Something like this

${texeci feh --bg-scale dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 1}

:)

Ok it seems I've solved my problem. I have to change: own_window_type desktop

to

own_window_type normal

oh my god thank you my saviour i finally can get some sleep!!! this was nagging me ever since i discovered conky, thanks a lot once again

Works for me, thank you very much :)

This works for me, but after I instantiate the transparent conky, if I click on the desktop, conky disappears.

How can I fix this?

You know (or not...) but with kde 4 ?feh --bg-scale dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 1? don't work because dcop is replaced by dbus. And with dbus I don't know how replace this command. But I find an other way.

1) Install feh

2) Create a script in /home/~/.kde4/Autostart with:

!/bin/bash

eval cat $HOME/.fehbg conky -c .conkyrc/.conkyrc1 &

adapt path of your conkyrc (mine is conkyrc1 because I have a conkyrc for gnome) and give it executable

3)Add in your .conkyrc file just under "TEXT":

${execi 100 feh --bg-scale "grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail --bytes=+11"}

Adapt the path of your plasma-appletsrc (in Ubuntu there is in .kde4, but with fedora in .kde...) I use execi 100 because when I change wallpaper, the name of new wallpaper appear after 1 minute in ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc ( I don't know why...)

And that work for me with Fedora9 and for other with Ubuntu. If anybody know how use feh with dbus in kde4...

Sorry, I forgot to respond. I'm going to have to try this now that I put KDE4 on my laptop. Maybe there is a dbus equivalent command to set or get the background filename.

You know that I am not able to use dbus, but I have solution with inotify (this package is in fedora and I think it is also in ubuntu... In resume I delete the "${execi 60 feh --bg-scale "grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail --bytes=+11"}" line in my conkyrc and I change the script in my /home/dominique/.kde/Autostart like this: Code:

!/bin/bash

feh --bg-scale "grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail --bytes=+11" conky -c .conkyrc/.conkyrc1 & while inotifywait /home/dominique/.kde/share/config/plasma-appletsrc; do feh --bg-scale "grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail --bytes=+11" done

And that work for me... (with 30 seconds of latency when I change wallpaper)

Worked fine for me. Had to change 'own_window_type normal' though. Thanks - Been annoying me for a long time :-)

That's real transcendental! I think, this also will be work as cron task, as i have slideshow. But, if conky be real transparent, with rendering against program background too :)

I should add: once you've disabled the menu and focus, to tune the conky window's behaviour you'll have to go into system settings -> window behavour -> window specific.

Can someone please post a pastebin link to a WORKING KDE4 .conkyrc so we can work with it like anonymouse is stating??

The command:

xsetroot -solid grey // use your desktop color here instead of "grey"

does all the job!

BTW: see your /usr/bin/startkde and look for xsetroot.

Thanks a lot for this post. I think better use zero instead of one in option of currentWallpaper. If you put 1 feh made only picture from first desktop as fake-root. Instead of this 0 is wallpaper of current desktop.
feh --bg-scale `dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 0`
in .conkyrc
${exec feh --bg-scale `dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 0`}
A last we have that conky set