My Conky setup. It's running on Ubuntu 18.04 lTS (Bionic Beaver) (cat /etc/*-release).

file setup

Your main configuration file will be in your home directory (~/) while supporting config files will be in ~/.conky/. Scripts need to be executable with chmod +x script.sh.

1. mkdir ~/.conky
2. touch ~/.conky/conkyrc
3. ln ~/.conky/conkyrc ~/.conkyrc

tips

Conky can use external scripts or commands like so ${exec ~/.conky/script.sh} or ${exec uname -r}. Use tools like grep, cut, and tr to modify output as needed.

example

Like nmcli -f in-use,ssid dev wifi | grep '*' | tr -d ' ' | tr -d '*' will find the current Wi-Fi network from nmcli (command-line tool for controlling NetworkManager). grep '*' finds the in-use network, tr -d ' ' removes white spaces from the output, and tr -d '*' removes the asterisk from the outpt.