Conky is a program that draws operating system data and other user or script supplied information to the main desktop. This program if very generic yet flexible; you can modify it's .conf to do almost whatever you want. You can have conky run programs or scripts specified in the .conf that run at either the standard update rate(which is 1000ms) or you can have your scripts run at user-defined time intervals. I found this feature of conky useful when I decided to make a couple python scripts to grab the local temperature and weather conditions from kktv's website.
Here's my conky.conf if you care to use it as a base for modification:
# Conky, a system monitor, based on torsmo
#
# Any original torsmo code is licensed under the BSD license
#
# All code written since the fork of torsmo is licensed under the GPL
#
# Please see COPYING for details
#
# Copyright (c) 2004, Hannu Saransaari and Lauri Hakkarainen
# Copyright (c) 2005-2010 Brenden Matthews, Philip Kovacs, et. al. (see AUTHORS)
# All rights reserved.
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
#
alignment top_right
background no
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color darkcyan
default_outline_color black
default_shade_color darkcyan
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
draw_outline yes
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont Droid Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 5
gap_y 60
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
no_buffers yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type normal
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no
# Added
double_buffer yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorate,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,below
TEXT
${color darkcyan}Hostname: ${exec hostname}
${color darkcyan}Uptime:$color $uptime
${color darkcyan}Processes:$color $processes ${color darkcyan}Running:$color $running_processes
${color darkcyan} Colorado Springs
${color darkcyan}Temperature: ${execi 300 python ~/bin/temp.py}
${color darkcyan}Conditions: ${execi 300 python ~/bin/weather.py}
${color darkcyan}RAM Usage:$color $mem/$memmax
${color darkcyan}$memperc% ${membar 4}
${color darkcyan}Swap Usage:$color $swap/$swapmax
${color darkcyan}$swapperc% ${swapbar 4}
${color darkcyan}CPU Usage:
${color darkcyan}$cpu% ${cpubar 4}
${color darkcyan}${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1 4}
${color darkcyan}File systems:
/ $color${fs_used /}/${fs_size /} ${fs_bar 6 /}
${color darkcyan}eth0: ${execi 300 ~/bin/showmac.sh eth0}
Up:$color ${upspeed eth0}
$color ${upspeedgraph eth0 7,225}
Down:$color ${downspeed eth0}
$color ${downspeedgraph eth0 7,225}
${color darkcyan}wlan0: ${execi 3 ~/bin/showmac.sh wlan0}
Up:$color ${upspeed wlan0}
$color ${upspeedgraph wlan0 7,225}
Down:$color ${downspeed wlan0}
$color ${downspeedgraph wlan0 7,225}
I modified the default to look a bit different. I also enabled transparency and fixed a flickering issue by enabling double buffering and changing a few other settings that are hard to find(thanks google). A screen shot is attached corresponding to the conky.conf provided. I hope you find this program as useful as I do.
