We are creating a series of YouTube videos under the “edu-“ label to guide users through the migration from ArcoLinux to Arch Linux. These tutorials aim to make the transition process smoother by explaining each step clearly and providing practical examples. Whether you’re switching to gain more control or to learn vanilla Arch, our edu- videos are here to support your journey.

ArcoLinux has stopped

Teaching never stops—because learning is a lifelong journey for all of us.

23 How to add a conky on Plasma – also for other desktops

Conkyzen (am-conkyzen – application where you can select all the conkies), the conkies (arcolinux-conky-collection-git) and the conky application (conky-lua-archers) are already installed on your system.

Plasma has its own widgets. But if you want to have your preferred conky back, you can.

It is possible you need to change a few things.

With a bit of knowledge you can run any conky on any desktop.

In this video we are going to run the conky from Willem.

We just need to change this line from 

own_window_type = ‘desktop’,– # options are: normal/override/dock/desktop/panel

to

own_window_type = ‘override’,– # options are: normal/override/dock/desktop/panel

How to autostart a conky

Conkyzen (am-conkyzen – application where you can select all the conkies), the conkies (arcolinux-conky-collection-git) and the conky application (conky-lua-archers) are already installed on your system.

We need to know that am-conky-session is the application that actually launches the conkies.

If we can autostart that one upon boot, we will have a conky at boot. We have made already such a tutorial for the pamac-tray icon.

Follow the video to see how we autostart am-conky-session.

We will also show you in above video how to add an extra custom keyboard shortcut to launch dolphin – the file manager from Plasma.

General conky info

A conky will NEVER EVER work on all desktops.

There are just too much differences between all the different window managers.

It will also depend on the software you have installed.

There are two versions of the application called ‘conky’.

  1. version 1.9 and earlier – old syntax
  2. version 1.10 and higher  – new syntax – LUA (and old syntax)

We install the application conky-lua-archers (1.10) on ArcoLinux

Options to explore when encountering issues :

  • own_window_type = ‘desktop’,          # options are: normal/override/dock/desktop/panel
  • own_window_transparent = true,     # options are : true and false
  • own_window_argb_visual = true,     # options are : true and false
  • own_window_argb_value = 0,           # options are : 0-255

More information about conkies can be found here :

Arch wiki

Conky github configuration

Conky github faq

Conky github user configs

Conky configuration on sourceforge

Conky variables on sourceforge

Plasma Challenge

You can follow our tutorials based on either of two ISO’s.

1. ArcoLinuxB Plasma (recommended)

We record the plasma video’s on an SSD installed from the ArcoLinuxB Plasma ISO.
You can either create your very own ArcoLinuxB Plasma ISO following this tutorial or download it from Sourceforge. (ArcoLinuxB-plasma-18.11.2.ISO of 4.3 GB – games included)

2. ArcoLinuxD Plasma

You can also use the ArcoLinuxD ISO and then install Plasma with the help of the github scripts. This will not be an exact copy of the ISO.

Learn about the Plasma desktop and enjoy it.