Applying Custom Themes And Skins In Kali Linux

Conky Manager is a graphical front-end for managing Conky config files. It provides options to start/stop, browse and edit Conky themes installed on the system. Packages are currently available in Launchpad for Ubuntu and derivatives (Linux Mint, etc).

Release info

Latest Version: 2.0 (2014-06-17)
Platform: Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
Language: Vala & GTK3

ProjectPage: https://launchpad.net/conky-manager

Features

• Start/Stop, Browse and Edit Conky themes
• Run Conky on system startup
• Options to change location, transparency and size of Conky widget window
• Options to change time and network interface

Installation

Well of course you must install Conky first. Easy to do:

root@kali:~# apt-get install conky-all

Ubuntu-based Distributions (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc)

If you are using Ubuntu or its derivatives (like Xubuntu, Linux Mint, etc) you can install it from the Launchpad PPA. Builds are available for the following Ubuntu releases:

• 13.10 (saucy)
• 14.04 (trusty)
• 14.10 (utopic)

For any other release, you can install it using the DEB files given below.

conky-manager-latest-i386.deb (32-bit, 1 MB)
conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb (64-bit, 1 MB)

To install from PPA, type the following commands one by one in a terminal window:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conky-manager

Updates will be installed automatically if you have enabled automatic updates enabled on your system. The package can also be updated manually by running the install command again.

sudo apt-get install conky-manager

Debian Linux

To install from PPA, type the following commands one by one in a terminal window:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conky-manager

The DEB files are available from following links:

conky-manager-latest-i386.deb (32-bit, 1 MB)
conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb (64-bit, 1 MB)

Kali Linux

Kali as usual will cry a howl when using PPA. I can still use PPA but using .deb package seems a lot easier.

Install conky-manager from .deb package

(this applies to both Ubuntu or Debian distributions)

Download .deb package on 32-bit System

root@kali:~# wget -q http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67740416/linux/conky-manager-latest-i386.deb

Download .deb package on 64-bit

root@kali:~# wget -q http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67740416/linux/conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb

The DEB files are available from following links:

conky-manager-latest-i386.deb (32-bit, 1 MB)
conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb (64-bit, 1 MB)

Because I use a 64-bit system, I’ve installed using the following commands:

First you make conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb executable using chmod +xcommand. Next you install it using dpkg  -i command with –ignore-depends flag. The reason we are ignoring dependencies is because Kali Linux doesn’t seem to resolve them too well.

root@kali:~# chmod +x conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb 
root@kali:~# dpkg -i conky-manager-latest-amd64.deb --ignore-depends

Launch Conky Manager

Press ALT+F2 and type in conky-manager

You should be able to configure Conky using Conky Manager now.

Theme Packs

The default installation contains only a few sample themes. For more themes, download the theme pack given below and install it using the Import button on the tool-bar.

Use the following command to download Conky Manager Theme pack.

root@kali:~# wget http://download2183.mediafire.com/s9p1h3ja73yg/icvmpzhlk7vgejt/default-themes-extra-1.cmtp.7z --progress=bar

Import it using the import button.

Configure Conky-Manager

Now that you got themes and widgets imported, you can open Conky Manager again and start making your desktop more usable.

A somewhat modified desktop with Conky Manager

Here’s something I came up with… Not very neat but you get the idea

Click to enlarge image

Conclusion:

All your config files are in the following folder.

root@kali:~/.conky#

If you are familiar with Conky (trust me, it’s easy to learn and no, you won’t break stuff by doing stuffs to conky… well unless you start using shell commands … but who does that anyway).

As usual, thanks for reading. Please share.