Conky in one desktop/KDE activity only?

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1

In 11.4, I managed to get Conky to run in only one of the four virtual desktops, but I can’t remember how I did it (not something you do every day…)! I’m now installing Conky in 12.1, and I’ve decided to rely entirely on KDE activities rather than virtual desktops this time. Using the same concyrc file I used with 11.4, the Conky window now appears on all (three) activity screens. Now this might just be because of any activities/desktop differences introduced in KDE 4.7, but I can’t be sure because, as I’ve said, I’ve forgotten how I performed this trick in 11.4… Can anyone help?

2

Different widgets in KDE4 workspaces: System-settings>Workspace Behavior>Workspace>Panel: show independent widget set.

3

But that setting only makes virtual desktops behave like activities, i.e. allow different widgets and wallpapers for each desktop, no? KDE activities allow diffrent widgets/wallpapers by default already…

4

Update: I have now added a second virtual desktop as well, and it turns out that Conky does not appear on the second at all. It therefore seems that it’s an activities-specific issue. But why, if all other applications can be started in one activity only, is Conky an exception - especially when configured in such a way that it ignores other virtual desktops?
I suspect that it’s something to do with the own-window settings in Conky configuration and will play around with them when I have the time to see what happens. Any Conky experts around who might know the answer?

5

Further update: If I “decorate” the Conky window, I can restrict it to one activity only in the normal way through the window menu. Unfortunately, as soon as I restart Conky “undecorated” (as I prefer), it appears again in all activities. Kwin rules only offer placements on selected desktops but not activities, so that’s no good either.
Surely, if it can be done through the window menu, there must be another way: there must be a configuration file somewhere that governs whether a window or application appears in an activity, and that I can modify accordingly. Does anyone know?

6

Continuing my conversation with myself, hoping that it will be of interest to someone else (and to bump it back up to the top of the forum in the hope someone else joins in…): The only way of keeping Conky confined to one activity seems to be to give it the standard window decoration and use the window menu, in the absence of any other method of controlling what apps pop up in what activity. Seems like activities are only very partially integrated into the Plasma desktop even in 7.x.
Another small annoyance is that Conky now has its own entry in the panel pager, which it never had before (and shouldn’t have: it’s supposed to be always open).

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The above should, of course, read “task manager” instead of “pager”…

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You now have company :slight_smile:

Thank you for your persistance. I basically followed your process and as you mentioned it appears that you need to use kwin to accomplish the task.
I used the following method. Conky still (initially) shows up on all activities, but at least I can have it show up on only 1 desktop for each activity.
Notice that in step 5) you can define the activities conky will appear on, it is not automatic though :frowning:

The following is using kde 4.8.1 on opensuse 11.4 64bit Note that my use case is a bit different than yours, I use 4 desktops each w/ “own widgets” and 4 separate activities. a total of 16 desktops

  1. editted conkyrc
    own_window yes
    own_window_hints below,skip_taskbar,sticky
    conky refreshed, kwin drew the window decorations
    Note, this configuration in conkyrc allows kwin to control the drawing of the window.

  2. right click on titlebar, choose “advanced ->special window settings”.
    (one of the least intuitive kde configuration tools I know of)

    a) size and position tab, define the desktop(s) conky will appear on.
    Place a checkmark in “desktop”, “Apply Initially”, then choose your desired desktop

    b) Arrangement and access tab
    Place a checkmark in keep below, force, yes
    Place a checkmark in skip taskbar, force, yes
    Place a checkmark in skip pager, force, yes
    Place a checkmark in skip switcher, force, yes

    c) Appearance and fixes tab
    Place a checkmark in “no titlebar and frame”, force, yes

  3. Restart conky, it should now appear without a border or titlebar and on just 1 desktop for each activity.

  4. To define which activities conky will appear on, Left click on conky window
    Press alt+F3
    In the activities menu you can choose the desired activities.

    Unfortunately as far as I know this setting will only persist until you log out

conky does not appear in my taskbar, pager or systemtray.
of course the config changes will not behave the same when I use a different WM such as openbox :frowning:
but it is only a 1 line change in conkyrc, and I can create a separate conkyrc for openbox.

I would appreciate tips on how to have conky appear on only 1 desktop for openbox, fluxbox, etc though

Hope this is useful to someone

9

Notice that it order to honor kwin settings, conky has to be (auto)started after plasma-desktop (which is not the default) and in phase 2 (not the default either) - otherwise it will get both autostarted and restarted by the session. Thus I use two differents conky.desktop.

  • For Kde only:** ~/.kde4/Autostart/conky.desktop**
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=conky
Exec=conky.sh
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Hidden=false
X-KDE-autostart-phase=2
X-KDE-autostart-after=plasma-desktop
OnlyShowIn=KDE;
  • For all other desktops: ~/.config/autostart/conky.desktop 
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=conky
Exec=conky.sh
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Hidden=false
NotShowIn=KDE;
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

conky.sh is a wrapper I wrote to achieve transparency unde KDE with and without kwin compositing enable. You’ll have to replace conky.sh whith conky in the examples above. X-KDE-autostart-phase=2 is ignored if conky.destop is placed in ~/.config/autostart. I don’t know why. I simply noticed.

You might want to take a look at this thread. Maybe the .conkyrc generated by conkyconf can give you some hints: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/464737-easy-configuring-conky-conkyconf.html

I can not help with KDE activities - I’m neither a KDE regular user nor a big fan. In my experience, setting up conky for KDE was never easy (especially because KDE doesn’t use true transparency). If your conky is not transparent, you don’t care.

10

Thanks for the tips, I’ll give that a go. Proper startup was the one thing not working to my satisfaction.
I actually ran across this thread looking for something else but I am happy to get a great non-KDE app working nicely with KDE as well as with my other WM’s

see ya.

11

Thanks for your further pursuit of this. My only unresolved problem is the window decorations, and I’ve (almost) got used to them. Don’t have KDE 4.8 yet, will see if things have improved when I get around to installing it.